0:00:00 (dramatic music)
0:00:02 Last week on the show,
0:00:06 we told you about an unusual new play on Broadway
0:00:09 called Stereophonic.
0:00:11 It is a long, intimate, funny, and totally gripping show
0:00:16 about a co-ed rock band in the 1970s
0:00:19 as they record an album that will turn out to be a huge hit.
0:00:23 Stereophonic itself has turned out to be a huge hit.
0:00:26 If you watched the Tony Awards the other night,
0:00:28 you saw superstars like Alicia Keys and Jay-Z,
0:00:31 Daniel Radcliffe, even Hilary Clinton,
0:00:34 who co-produced a Broadway musical this season.
0:00:36 But it was Stereophonic,
0:00:38 the play with a bunch of nobodies,
0:00:40 as one cast member said during the Tony Awards,
0:00:43 that stole the show, winning five awards.
0:00:46 Here is the playwright, David Ajmi,
0:00:49 accepting his award for best play.
0:00:52 – This was a very hard journey to get this play up here.
0:00:56 Michael McKeel and Fran Offenhauser,
0:00:59 who gave me a place to live for seven years
0:01:01 so that I could write this play.
0:01:03 It’s really hard to make a career in the arts.
0:01:06 We need to fund the arts in America.
0:01:08 It is the hallmark of a civilized society.
0:01:10 – When I interviewed Ajmi a couple of weeks ago,
0:01:15 I asked him what it’s like to be at the vortex
0:01:18 of a huge hit.
0:01:19 He has been writing plays for a couple of decades,
0:01:22 but this is his first show on Broadway.
0:01:25 Here’s what he told us.
0:01:26 – I feel like I’ve been in a car accident.
0:01:27 We all feel that way.
0:01:28 We’re just totally dislocated.
0:01:30 It doesn’t feel good.
0:01:31 It feels weirdly bad.
0:01:33 – I have a little bit of a hard time believing that.
0:01:35 – No, I know.
0:01:36 Everyone does.
0:01:37 Because you can’t take in what’s good or bad.
0:01:40 You’re just taking in stimuli.
0:01:41 You’re taking in the overstimulation,
0:01:43 which you can’t take in because it exceeds your capacity.
0:01:46 I know it’s positive intellectually,
0:01:48 but the way I’m processing it isn’t like joyous.
0:01:52 There’s moments of joy,
0:01:53 and then we just get dislocated again,
0:01:55 because we don’t know what’s happening.
0:01:56 It’s too weird.
0:01:58 When your status changes,
0:01:59 everyone starts to act really weird.
0:02:02 I don’t like it.
0:02:04 – Maybe David Ajmi is just an unusual person,
0:02:07 or maybe the people who create theater
0:02:11 are an unusual people tuned to a different frequency.
0:02:16 Why else would someone try to make a living
0:02:18 in an industry that is so financially precarious,
0:02:21 even in the best of times?
0:02:23 And these have not been the best of times.
0:02:26 – I’d say our costs have gone up about 30%
0:02:29 since the pandemic.
0:02:30 – So today on Freakinomics Radio,
0:02:32 will the success of Stereophonic
0:02:35 help change this grim future?
0:02:37 – It’s not that we’re waiting for the audiences to come back.
0:02:40 It’s that the core audience entirely has shifted.
0:02:44 – Also, when you have a hot show,
0:02:47 how do you think about raising ticket prices?
0:02:50 – You kind of play a game of chicken with yourself
0:02:52 and with your audience.
0:02:54 – And we will give you some backstage gossip too.
0:02:57 – I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this.
0:03:00 – Yes, you’re allowed.
0:03:01 We’ll hear all that starting now.
0:03:03 (upbeat music)
0:03:10 – This is Freakinomics Radio,
0:03:19 the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything
0:03:22 with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:03:24 (upbeat music)
0:03:27 – As I mentioned in our previous episode,
0:03:35 this two-part look at Stereophonic,
0:03:38 spun out of another series that we’re making
0:03:40 about the economics of live theater.
0:03:43 The fundamental problem here is that theater
0:03:45 is a handmade thing,
0:03:47 and it doesn’t get much more efficient
0:03:49 even as you add technology the way most industries do.
0:03:52 Stereophonic is a relatively small show
0:03:55 with just seven on-stage performers,
0:03:57 but they sit atop a pyramid of dozens of people
0:04:01 who help put on the show every night.
0:04:03 Stage managers, wardrobe and props managers,
0:04:06 lighting and sound technicians,
0:04:08 the ushers in the theater,
0:04:11 you even have to pay understudies,
0:04:13 actors on standby in case anyone from the cast gets sick.
0:04:17 It would be one thing if you could scale up a show
0:04:20 that becomes a hit,
0:04:21 if you could sell five or 10,000 tickets a night
0:04:25 rather than the 770 that can fit into the Golden Theater
0:04:30 where Stereophonic is playing.
0:04:32 The show is seen by roughly 6,000 people every week.
0:04:36 David Ajmi, who wrote Stereophonic,
0:04:39 he is not one of those 6,000.
0:04:42 – Oh, I don’t want you.
0:04:43 I don’t see my shows
0:04:44 because I can’t stand watching my own show
0:04:46 in front of an audience.
0:04:48 Sometimes I’ll have my assistant go as me,
0:04:50 so I teach my assistant everything that I’m looking for
0:04:53 and all my sticking points.
0:04:55 And then I say, okay, did that happen?
0:04:57 Did that happen?
0:04:58 Did that happen?
0:04:59 But I don’t like to watch it because I find it
0:05:01 too intimate and excruciating.
0:05:03 – Is it excruciating because it’s a thing that you made
0:05:05 or it’s excruciating because it’s a thing that you made
0:05:08 that is you essentially?
0:05:09 – Both, but more the latter.
0:05:11 And it’s excruciating because it’s live
0:05:13 and I can’t control it.
0:05:14 But it’s me also.
0:05:16 It is the most vulnerable thing in the world.
0:05:17 I can’t even tell you.
0:05:18 – So if David Ajmi isn’t in the audience, who is?
0:05:26 On Broadway right now, there are 35 shows running.
0:05:30 Last week, they collectively sold 300,000 tickets.
0:05:34 Who are those people?
0:05:35 Let’s ask someone who knows.
0:05:37 – My name is John Johnson.
0:05:39 I run a production company called Wagner Johnson Productions
0:05:42 that is a producing company as well
0:05:43 as a general management company.
0:05:45 – Johnson is one of the lead producers on Stereophonic.
0:05:49 I asked him, who is coming to the theater post pandemic?
0:05:52 – There used to be, and we used to call them
0:05:54 carriage trade audiences that came from the Upper West Side
0:05:59 and Upper East Side that were women of a certain age
0:06:01 who would come down and see the new play
0:06:04 from the National Theater or oh, Glenda Jackson’s in a play.
0:06:08 I’m going to see that.
0:06:09 – But now?
0:06:10 – A new core audience has emerged in this season.
0:06:14 It was emerging as we’ve gone through
0:06:15 each season sequentially post pandemic.
0:06:17 This season is the season of oh,
0:06:20 it’s not that we’re waiting for the audiences to come back.
0:06:23 It’s that the core audience entirely has shifted
0:06:26 because we do have many more successes
0:06:29 in season three post pandemic than we did the last two.
0:06:33 – Name some of those successes
0:06:34 in addition to Stereophonic.
0:06:36 You have Gutenberg, the musical,
0:06:38 which recouped in the fall.
0:06:39 You have the production of “O’ Mary”
0:06:41 that was a huge hit off Broadway that then transferred.
0:06:44 We were producers, lead producers on “Danny and the Deplusee”
0:06:46 off Broadway that starred Aubrey Plaza.
0:06:49 That was a similar sort of success story.
0:06:51 And then further on Broadway, we’re seeing, you know,
0:06:54 Jeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People,”
0:06:56 Sarah Paulson, “Inappropriate.”
0:06:57 Some would say, oh, well, Jeremy Strong was on succession.
0:07:00 Of course, it’s going to be a massive sellout.
0:07:02 Sarah Paulson is a star as well,
0:07:05 but this isn’t Daniel Craig,
0:07:06 who I’ve been fortunate enough to work with.
0:07:08 It’s not folks that are global superstars.
0:07:11 If the core audience pre-pandemic
0:07:13 was women ages late 50s into their 70s,
0:07:17 that we’re seeing shows six, eight times a year,
0:07:19 that audience has shifted down dramatically
0:07:22 to folks in their late 30s to their early 50s
0:07:24 who have binged every season of “American Horror Story”
0:07:27 that Sarah Paulson’s in.
0:07:28 And now when she’s in a play, they’re going,
0:07:30 oh, she’s on stage now, I’m going.
0:07:32 The folks who binged succession four times over
0:07:35 are sitting there going, Jeremy Strong’s in a play,
0:07:37 I’m going to that.
0:07:38 I don’t care how much it costs.
0:07:39 It’s event theater.
0:07:40 Event theater has always been there,
0:07:41 but I think the nature of who is part of that event theater
0:07:45 now has shifted a little bit.
0:07:46 – The other thing I noticed about the stereophonic audience,
0:07:49 it was the first play I’ve ever been to on Broadway,
0:07:51 play or musical, where the restroom line for the men’s
0:07:55 was longer than the women’s at intermission.
0:07:57 – Did you see “Lemon Trilogy” two years ago?
0:07:59 ‘Cause it was the same way at “Lemon Trilogy.”
0:08:01 – I did not.
0:08:02 – I agree, stereophonic fits into that same generational shifts
0:08:05 as well in terms of the new core audience,
0:08:06 because one would think, oh, it’s a story about a band
0:08:09 in the late ’70s, it’s dead aimed towards a boomer audience.
0:08:13 Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we don’t have folks
0:08:15 who are in that generation who’d come and see it,
0:08:18 but the groundswell of support, the age range of it,
0:08:21 you would think, oh, how is Gen Z going to tip into a play
0:08:24 like this when most of these folks were born
0:08:26 even 20 years after the play?
0:08:28 But I think the nature of rock and roll,
0:08:31 the nature of creating music,
0:08:33 the nature of this bubble of a studio,
0:08:36 and the drama that that creates is timeless.
0:08:39 – I think the reason why, especially a lot of young people
0:08:45 are coming to the theater in 2024,
0:08:48 is that we forget, because I think we have collective PTSD,
0:08:52 but we were locked in our houses for three and a half years.
0:08:55 I think people want to be around each other.
0:08:58 – That is Tom Pesinka, the actor who plays Peter,
0:09:01 the leader of the band in Stereophonic.
0:09:03 The band is never named,
0:09:05 but they do bear a firm resemblance to Fleetwood Mac.
0:09:08 Peter and his girlfriend, Diana,
0:09:10 are at the center of a lot of the show’s drama.
0:09:13 The entire cast has remained intact
0:09:16 since the show began last year Off-Broadway
0:09:18 at the non-profit theater Playwrights Horizons.
0:09:21 – Off-Broadway, it felt very fake until you make it.
0:09:25 You have to construct intimacy.
0:09:28 You have to construct chemistry.
0:09:31 I always say that on Broadway,
0:09:33 if you had seen it off-Broadway,
0:09:35 I think you’re gonna see a much tighter knit group.
0:09:38 Sarah and I, we didn’t know each other at all.
0:09:41 – I’m Sarah Pigeon,
0:09:44 and I’m currently in Stereophonic playing Diana.
0:09:47 We’ve done 50 performances,
0:09:50 and we got previews close to 70.
0:09:52 We did 70-something performances at Playwrights,
0:09:55 and 20-something previews.
0:09:57 No one’s taken the show off yet.
0:09:59 – Are you kidding?
0:10:00 – Not at all.
0:10:01 At Playwrights, we canceled the first preview
0:10:05 because I got sick,
0:10:07 and then we canceled the fourth to last show
0:10:10 because someone lost their voice.
0:10:12 So we’ve only missed two.
0:10:15 There’s sort of been this agreement
0:10:16 that unless you’re deathly ill, you’ll be on the stage.
0:10:19 – So you have a bunch of pissed-off understudies.
0:10:21 (laughing)
0:10:24 – I don’t know, you’d have to interview them.
0:10:26 (gentle music)
0:10:27 – I mean, I think it just requires
0:10:29 a different type of stamina.
0:10:31 – Live theater has been declared dead
0:10:33 or dying for years.
0:10:35 We have TV and film,
0:10:36 and now we have an endless stream of entertainments
0:10:40 and distractions,
0:10:41 most of which require much less effort
0:10:44 and coordination and investment than live theater.
0:10:47 So what would be lost if live theater did disappear?
0:10:52 – I think a certain level of discipline,
0:10:56 a certain level of technique,
0:10:57 a certain level of lineage would be lost.
0:11:02 Working as an actor in the theater,
0:11:05 it requires different muscles
0:11:06 than working in television and film.
0:11:09 You have to do eight shows a week.
0:11:10 It’s the first time I’m really doing that,
0:11:12 and my body’s breaking down.
0:11:15 That’s just not what happens
0:11:18 when you work in front of a camera.
0:11:20 You get to go nap in your trailer for four hours
0:11:22 until they call you to set,
0:11:23 and you’re there for less than an hour,
0:11:25 and you shoot four or five takes,
0:11:27 and then you’re done.
0:11:28 – In this job and how taxing it can be,
0:11:31 eight shows a week,
0:11:32 and then our show comes in a little over three hours,
0:11:35 and there’s singing involved,
0:11:38 and screaming, and laughing, and smoking,
0:11:41 and I don’t have much of a life.
0:11:43 I have no existence really
0:11:45 outside of the Golden Theater on 45th Street.
0:11:48 – Your off day is Monday?
0:11:50 – Monday.
0:11:51 – You have a Sunday matinee
0:11:52 than no Sunday night show, is that right?
0:11:54 – No Sunday night show.
0:11:55 – So what do you do between the time
0:11:56 you’re done Sunday afternoon
0:11:58 and then Tuesday evening show?
0:12:00 – I beat feet out of midtown.
0:12:04 Sometimes my mom comes into town,
0:12:06 and we get a nice dinner somewhere,
0:12:09 and I sort of blow off some steam.
0:12:11 There’s just no time to do that
0:12:12 when you get home at 11 o’clock,
0:12:13 like who wants to have dinner close to midnight,
0:12:16 and then Monday is spent sleeping.
0:12:19 I haven’t done laundry in a really long time.
0:12:21 – Do you eat healthy?
0:12:23 – I love food.
0:12:25 I like healthy food,
0:12:27 but recently, because of the schedule,
0:12:30 I just find it quite difficult to find something
0:12:32 that I want to eat before a three hour show,
0:12:35 and sometimes two, three hour shows.
0:12:37 So I’ve been getting these craft,
0:12:39 mac and cheese, microwaveable, individual bowls,
0:12:43 and they usually, I’m not looking at the microwave,
0:12:45 so they spill all over the microwave,
0:12:47 then I have to clean the microwave,
0:12:49 but it is like carbs and a couple hundred calories
0:12:53 to get you through the show
0:12:54 and not have this huge, full stomach.
0:12:56 I’ve ordered a lot of different types of soups
0:13:01 during this run,
0:13:03 because sometimes my voice is a little rough.
0:13:06 ♪ Sunday morning ♪
0:13:11 ♪ And the life’s fine ♪
0:13:15 – Sarah Pigeon and Tom Pesinka
0:13:17 were both nominated for Tony Awards,
0:13:20 but neither of them won.
0:13:22 Stereophonic did win Best New Play, Best Direction,
0:13:25 Best Scenic Design, and Sound Design,
0:13:28 and Will Brill, who plays the band’s bassist, Reg,
0:13:32 won Best Featured Actor in a Play.
0:13:35 It was Brill who, during his acceptance speech,
0:13:38 called the Stereophonic crew a bunch of nobodies.
0:13:41 – I think awards are really important for the artists.
0:13:46 I find them quite stressful,
0:13:47 and I find them quite difficult,
0:13:49 because there are always thousands of people
0:13:53 who’ve worked so hard and they are not recognized.
0:13:56 – That is Sonia Friedman.
0:13:58 She is another lead producer of Stereophonic,
0:14:01 and she is one of the most successful
0:14:03 theatrical producers in the world.
0:14:05 – I watch these artists work really, really hard
0:14:09 and try to find the beauty in what they’re doing,
0:14:14 but they aren’t always kind to themselves in the process.
0:14:19 We’re in a very, very, very difficult world,
0:14:21 and what Stereophonic, if nothing else, reminds me
0:14:26 is that whilst we’re making art,
0:14:28 we must also do everything we can
0:14:31 to be kind to one another.
0:14:33 – Is Stereophonic, to some degree, a metaphor
0:14:35 for what you and your colleagues do all day, every day?
0:14:38 I mean, one great thing about the theater
0:14:41 or any of the performing arts,
0:14:44 but that is also a challenge,
0:14:45 is you need to do it live and do it well
0:14:48 every time because last night’s performance
0:14:52 might’ve been great,
0:14:53 but that’s not what tonight’s audience is seeing.
0:14:56 – I think what it is is just very honest
0:14:58 about how we make work,
0:15:01 and that what an audience will see
0:15:04 isn’t always the mechanics of how messy it can be
0:15:08 and how relationships can be really, really fractious,
0:15:13 offstage, and then they come onstage
0:15:15 and nobody would ever know.
0:15:16 I could tell you so many secrets
0:15:18 about chaotic relationships that happen in the wings
0:15:21 and then they come onstage.
0:15:23 – Well, let’s have a couple.
0:15:24 – And now I’m not gonna give you any,
0:15:25 but that’s the illusion of theater
0:15:27 and that’s the magic of theater.
0:15:29 There’s this invisible magic line
0:15:31 between the wings and on the stage,
0:15:33 and they are two completely separate worlds.
0:15:36 You step over that line
0:15:38 and that’s where the magic happens right in front of you,
0:15:42 and then you step behind that line
0:15:44 and it’s not always as magic.
0:15:46 – After the break, we step behind that line.
0:15:52 I’m Stephen Dubner and this is Freakin’ Omics Radio.
0:15:55 Sonia Friedman has been producing theater
0:16:08 in London, New York, and elsewhere
0:16:10 for more than 30 years.
0:16:12 Her shows have won dozens upon dozens of major awards.
0:16:16 The other night, her shows won nine Tony Awards,
0:16:20 five for Stereophonic and four for the revival
0:16:23 of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along.
0:16:26 She’s had several other shows on Broadway this season,
0:16:29 including a new drama called Patriots
0:16:31 about the rise of Vladimir Putin.
0:16:34 She has also produced the long-running Harry Potter
0:16:36 and the Cursed Child
0:16:38 and the very long-running Book of Mormon.
0:16:41 Normally I’m producing upwards of 12, 15 shows
0:16:44 across the world.
0:16:46 – And what is Friedman’s advice for a would-be producer?
0:16:49 – You should be as a producer,
0:16:51 as interested in the business side of it.
0:16:54 One of the reasons why I’ve had longevity in the industry
0:16:56 is that I’m as fascinated and interested
0:17:00 with the numbers.
0:17:02 I will do all my own budgets.
0:17:03 Before I set out to do a show,
0:17:05 I’ll be the one that sits behind a computer
0:17:07 and literally batches it out.
0:17:09 I need to understand where the show needs to sit
0:17:12 in terms of what’s scale theater
0:17:14 and what the whole model of it needs to be
0:17:18 in order to make it viable.
0:17:20 – Does it happen now and again
0:17:21 that there’s a show that you’re dying to produce
0:17:23 but you just can’t make it work financially
0:17:25 in the theaters that are available to you?
0:17:27 – Yes.
0:17:28 – How often?
0:17:28 – It’s becoming more often now
0:17:30 because everything is getting more expensive.
0:17:34 – In London, as in New York.
0:17:35 London is still a better economic model than New York
0:17:40 but we’re creeping up.
0:17:42 I mean, we’ve gone up 21% our costs since COVID.
0:17:45 – But New York’s probably 40 or something.
0:17:48 – New York is about,
0:17:51 it’s hard to put an actual figure on it
0:17:52 but I’d say our costs have gone up about 30%
0:17:55 since the pandemic.
0:17:56 – And why is London’s economic model
0:17:59 for theater better than New York’s?
0:18:01 – When I first started producing in New York,
0:18:03 taking into account the exchange rate,
0:18:05 New York was about three times more expensive than London
0:18:08 and it’s now about five times.
0:18:10 The play that would cost me 1.5 million in London
0:18:14 will now have to be capitalized
0:18:16 between seven and eight million in New York.
0:18:19 And because of the week pound,
0:18:22 that’s really, really expensive for us.
0:18:25 And the difference, why?
0:18:27 – I mean, it sounds implausible for two things
0:18:30 that are so similar in such seemingly similar places
0:18:34 to be so…
0:18:36 – It does, it does
0:18:36 because it’s exactly the same show.
0:18:39 It’s the same set, same group of actors on the stage.
0:18:42 – So what’s driving it?
0:18:43 – Absolutely everything is more expensive over here.
0:18:47 – What’s the biggest difference?
0:18:48 Is it the real estate, the renting of the theater?
0:18:51 – The unions, number one, look, I’m not anti-union,
0:18:54 that’s just a fact.
0:18:55 – How many unions would be typically involved
0:18:57 in a Broadway show?
0:18:58 – I’m gonna say a number
0:18:59 and then I might have to come back and correct it.
0:19:03 – I think it’s about 17 unions.
0:19:06 – There are actually 13 unions.
0:19:08 For instance, IOTC Local 751,
0:19:11 which represents box office treasurers
0:19:14 and theatrical wardrobe union Local 764,
0:19:18 which represents wardrobe workers
0:19:20 and the guardians who supervise child actors.
0:19:23 – So that’s the unions, yes, the real estate,
0:19:26 it is more expensive here, it just is.
0:19:29 The advertising is very, very expensive.
0:19:32 The shops that build the sets
0:19:34 have become much more expensive since COVID
0:19:37 because of the supply chain issue.
0:19:39 Highers of lighting, sound, all of the video equipment,
0:19:43 the deals for the star actors,
0:19:45 they know their power, they know their worth.
0:19:47 Everything is more expensive
0:19:50 and it’s much, much harder therefore
0:19:53 to take creative risk here in New York,
0:19:56 and which is why Stereophonic is beautiful and wonderful,
0:19:59 but it’s an outlier.
0:20:01 It’s not the norm.
0:20:02 – Do you think it bodes well for the future?
0:20:06 – Look, I think every season you have to have
0:20:09 something like Stereophonic,
0:20:10 where you can prove that you can do shows on Broadway
0:20:15 and they can have a financial model
0:20:19 that can withstand the costs of New York.
0:20:24 – So how do you withstand the costs of New York?
0:20:29 – By selling as many tickets as you can
0:20:31 at as high a price as the market will allow.
0:20:35 The average price of a Broadway ticket is around $125,
0:20:39 but premium seats can sell for multiples of that.
0:20:42 And it’s up to people like John Johnson
0:20:44 to set those prices.
0:20:46 – There’s definitely a little bit of feel to it
0:20:48 as opposed to the ticketing companies
0:20:50 for concerts or sporting events in terms of the algorithm,
0:20:53 but that’s because they’re dealing with 25,000 seats
0:20:56 in an arena or 50,000 seats in a baseball stadium
0:20:59 or 80,000 seats in a football stadium.
0:21:01 Here, we have 800 seats a night
0:21:03 or in terms of Stereophonic specifically,
0:21:05 770 seats a night.
0:21:07 – And I guess it’s always tricky
0:21:08 when you’re selling an asset that’s so perishable.
0:21:11 – For sure.
0:21:12 We will have premium pricing now that ranges anywhere
0:21:14 from $249 on a Wednesday matinee
0:21:17 all the way to $349 on a Friday or Saturday night.
0:21:21 – So Stereophonic grossed nearly $800,000 last week,
0:21:24 which is a really good number,
0:21:26 but it’s still not nearly among the leaders in grossing.
0:21:31 – Correct.
0:21:32 – I’m sure some of that is size of house.
0:21:34 Maybe some of it is ticket price.
0:21:35 I don’t know.
0:21:36 How do you look at this as an asset
0:21:38 that you’re trying to properly price
0:21:40 and extract the right amount of return on?
0:21:43 – We priced the show to move early on
0:21:46 because we knew that while it was a white hot ticket
0:21:48 at Playwrights Horizons,
0:21:50 the only way that we can get it back
0:21:51 is that if the houses are full,
0:21:53 that the word of mouth can continue to spread
0:21:55 and how do we jumpstart that?
0:21:56 And we jumpstart that by saying,
0:21:58 we’re just gonna price the show to move.
0:22:00 We had preview pricing that was $40, $80, $120 to start
0:22:04 for the month of April,
0:22:06 but you have to catch up to it
0:22:07 because now we can get $229 for them.
0:22:12 You kind of play a game of chicken with yourself
0:22:14 and with your audience for something like Stereophonic
0:22:17 because it’s an unknown title.
0:22:20 Obviously it’s getting more well-known,
0:22:21 but two, it does not have a major mega star in it.
0:22:24 It has a group of incredible rising stars,
0:22:27 but they’re not household names.
0:22:29 The way that we get there is by getting people in the door
0:22:33 and really building to that moment.
0:22:35 Additionally, we have about 30 to 50 Tony voters
0:22:38 in the show each night and those are comp tickets.
0:22:41 We have tons of press who also are seeing the show for free
0:22:44 for that New York Times feature that’s coming
0:22:46 or that TV Booker for Live with Kelly and Mark
0:22:50 or Jimmy Fallon.
0:22:51 – Or that pesky podcast.
0:22:53 – Or that pesky podcast exactly.
0:22:54 – How often do you reevaluate your ticket pricing
0:22:58 and strategies at a daily thing, a weekly thing?
0:23:00 – I would say a couple of times a week.
0:23:02 You see how the show sells, you see where it goes.
0:23:05 We’re not going so out of control
0:23:08 of sitting there on a Sunday morning,
0:23:10 pulling levers and twisting knobs there.
0:23:11 It’s usually like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday type thing.
0:23:14 – So Stereophonic was originally booked into the Golden Theater
0:23:18 for a relatively short run,
0:23:19 but you’ve already extended that a couple of times.
0:23:21 Now at least until early 2025,
0:23:25 could you envision this show playing on Broadway
0:23:28 for years and years?
0:23:30 – I mean, in my wildest dreams, sure.
0:23:32 The surprises are what keeps every person
0:23:35 that you probably talk to on this podcast coming back
0:23:37 because as much as yes, it’s hard and yes, it’s expensive.
0:23:41 When something like that hits, it makes everyone just go, yes.
0:23:46 This is why we do what we do.
0:23:48 We just keep saying over and over again,
0:23:50 when will it slow down?
0:23:51 When will the sales slow down?
0:23:52 When will it sort of stop?
0:23:54 And it just has not yet.
0:23:55 We are going to scale.
0:23:56 We’re going to have a London production.
0:23:57 We’re going to have a first-class national tour, et cetera.
0:24:00 – There’s going to be a film, I understand.
0:24:02 – There’s lots of interest in the film.
0:24:04 – And would an initial investment
0:24:06 in the theatrical production get me a piece of that or no?
0:24:09 – Doesn’t get you the right to invest in it.
0:24:11 They have the right, but not the obligation to invest in London.
0:24:13 They have the right, but not the obligation
0:24:14 to invest in the national tour,
0:24:15 but there’s a firewall there for any movie.
0:24:18 The standard number you see
0:24:20 is that only around 20% of Broadway shows recoup
0:24:23 even their original investment.
0:24:25 Based on people I’ve been speaking with
0:24:27 and based on some personal exposure,
0:24:29 I wouldn’t be surprised if 20% is actually overstating it.
0:24:33 But whatever the case,
0:24:34 most Broadway shows lose a lot of money for their investors.
0:24:37 Does it even make sense to call it investing?
0:24:40 Should I think of it instead as essentially
0:24:43 a way of supporting the arts with a small chance
0:24:46 that I’ll actually get some money back?
0:24:48 – Commercial philanthropy is what some people like to call it.
0:24:51 – When I first heard that phrase or that idea,
0:24:53 I thought, yeah, it’s unfortunately true,
0:24:55 but then I think what’s unfortunate about it, right?
0:24:57 I mean, people spend all kinds of money
0:24:59 on all kinds of things.
0:25:00 – Exactly.
0:25:00 – It’s kind of like buying a lottery ticket, I guess,
0:25:02 is the way I think of it now.
0:25:03 – The odds are probably a little bit better
0:25:05 than a lottery ticket.
0:25:06 It’s on par with most restaurants.
0:25:08 Let’s use a gambling analogy like a Blackjack table
0:25:11 or, but I’ll use your lottery one as well.
0:25:13 Hip begets more hits as it scales up.
0:25:15 And so as you’re coming back to buy that lottery ticket,
0:25:19 your odds of winning again are pretty impossible.
0:25:21 If you have a good run at a Blackjack table
0:25:22 and then you go back the next day,
0:25:23 be like, I’m really good at Blackjack,
0:25:24 but it’s like, no, you just went on a run.
0:25:26 Whereas in the instance of any of these mega-hit musicals
0:25:30 that then scale, you’re walking back to a table
0:25:32 that you know you’re gonna be getting 21 over and over again,
0:25:35 because as it scales, it’s gonna continue to do that.
0:25:39 There are tons of cliche sayings in the theater.
0:25:40 You know, you can make a killing or you can get killed.
0:25:43 Anybody who was around in the 80s, like people would talk about,
0:25:46 oh, my cat’s investment returned 5,000%.
0:25:49 That makes the stock market or any hedge fund manager
0:25:52 kind of, you know, blow their mind.
0:25:53 So on the rare occasion that a show does return 5,000%,
0:25:59 how is that money divvied up?
0:26:01 For instance, do the non-household names in Stereophonic
0:26:05 get any back end?
0:26:07 We’ll find out after this break.
0:26:08 I’m Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio.
0:26:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:26:15 The new hit Broadway play Stereophonic
0:26:23 is about a band getting famous as they’re in the studio
0:26:27 making their second record and how their relationships ebb
0:26:30 and flow and sometimes crater as they are beset by the fame.
0:26:36 That is very much the case for Diana and Peter,
0:26:39 as played by Sarah Pigeon and Tom Pesinka.
0:26:42 So many plays are described as like slice of life,
0:26:45 but I think our play really is a slice of life.
0:26:47 You’re coming into it in the middle of something
0:26:50 and you’re leaving it in the middle of something.
0:26:52 It’s more of a comma as opposed to a period.
0:26:56 We know that these people will live on.
0:26:58 We know that their careers will change or end or something.
0:27:05 Where do you think Diana is five years after the play ends?
0:27:10 I think she writes a solo album.
0:27:12 I think it’s good, but I think she always feels like it would
0:27:14 have been better if she did it with Peter.
0:27:16 What’s Peter doing five years after?
0:27:18 I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this.
0:27:20 I think at one point it was said that Grover goes on
0:27:25 to become one of the world’s greatest producers
0:27:28 and Peter sleeps on his couch for a bit.
0:27:32 At least the actor playing Peter won’t be sleeping
0:27:35 on couches anytime soon.
0:27:36 Tom Pesinka has been performing his whole life.
0:27:40 He did musicals all through high school
0:27:42 and eventually went to Yale drama school.
0:27:44 He’s kept busy ever since.
0:27:46 Some stage work, some TV and film,
0:27:48 but career success has taken a while.
0:27:52 Stereophonic is a big boost for him.
0:27:56 I’m doing interviews for the first time.
0:27:57 I’m doing photo shoots for the first time.
0:27:59 I’m doing all this stuff.
0:28:00 It’s so novel to me, everything.
0:28:02 Is it everything I’ve ever wanted on paper?
0:28:05 Yeah, for sure.
0:28:06 But experiencing it is a very different story.
0:28:10 We had a big press day when the Tony nominations came out.
0:28:13 Just going from interview to interview to interview.
0:28:16 I was so exhausted by the end of it
0:28:18 and I went back to the hotel room
0:28:19 where my girlfriend and my dog were staying.
0:28:22 I just drew a circle with my finger in the air
0:28:26 and I said, this is real life.
0:28:28 That is something else.
0:28:29 And I will participate in that for my business and it’s fun.
0:28:33 But I’m so glad that this stuff
0:28:35 is starting to happen for me at 36 and not 21
0:28:39 ’cause I think it’s so easy to lose your head
0:28:42 and blur the lines between what is real life
0:28:46 and what is, I don’t know, something else.
0:28:50 When real rock stars come to see the show,
0:28:53 I know Ronnie Wood is coming soon
0:28:55 or just came between Rolling Stones shows.
0:28:58 Have you met with them afterwards?
0:29:00 No, and this is like a PSA
0:29:02 to all the famous people that come to the show.
0:29:04 Please say hello.
0:29:05 (laughing)
0:29:06 No one comes back.
0:29:08 I have a guest book
0:29:09 and there’s one signature in it, Ellen Burston.
0:29:11 She’s the only person in my guest book
0:29:14 and I’d love to fill it up.
0:29:15 As the producer John Johnson told us,
0:29:18 neither Tom Pesinka nor any of the other cast members
0:29:21 of Stereophonic are household names.
0:29:24 Only one of them, Will Brill, had ever been in a Broadway show.
0:29:29 But they are now responsible for helping create a hit
0:29:32 that may earn its producers and investors a very good return.
0:29:36 Traditionally, only big stars
0:29:38 have had profit sharing deals on Broadway,
0:29:40 but lately, thanks to the broader economic discussions
0:29:43 around income inequality,
0:29:45 there has been a movement toward broadening this practice.
0:29:48 So I asked John Johnson if or how the cast members
0:29:52 of Stereophonic may share in the show’s financial upside.
0:29:57 Yeah, we structure a lot of our deals
0:29:58 regardless of whether the person is a household name
0:30:01 or not with an upside potential
0:30:03 because I think in general,
0:30:05 when everyone is along for the ride
0:30:08 and everyone is cut in,
0:30:10 it makes the experience for all sort of spiritually better.
0:30:14 When you say upside potentially mean if the show does well,
0:30:16 the performers start to get a piece of the action.
0:30:19 Correct.
0:30:20 The specific nature of the show being an ensemble piece
0:30:23 and being this band, literally, who have grown together,
0:30:27 it just felt right.
0:30:29 I’ve done tons of shows that have had singular A-list stars
0:30:33 that you pay a handsome amount of money
0:30:36 and it’s a 14 or 16 week run
0:30:37 ’cause that’s what stars like to do
0:30:39 because then they’re off to their next TV show
0:30:40 or their next movie.
0:30:41 So I get paid 5,000 a week.
0:30:45 That’s Tom Pesinka.
0:30:47 But I see 2,000 something of that because of taxes
0:30:51 and because of 20% goes to my representation.
0:30:55 I’m also paying other people as well.
0:30:58 I think people don’t realize on Broadway
0:31:00 when you’re especially running a Tony campaign,
0:31:02 you’re hiring a publicist.
0:31:03 You are not the show.
0:31:05 The show has a publicist,
0:31:06 but I also elected to hire my personal publicist,
0:31:10 a stylist, someone who grooms me.
0:31:13 If it’s a Tony event and I’m a Tony nominee,
0:31:15 the producers will give me a certain amount of money
0:31:19 to spend on those things.
0:31:20 But you’re still spending a lot out of pocket.
0:31:22 Spending a lot of money.
0:31:24 The profit sharing, I don’t know exactly what it is.
0:31:28 Was it negotiated collectively with all of you?
0:31:31 Yes, we negotiated collectively for everything.
0:31:34 Was that a union driven negotiation or no?
0:31:37 No, we got together as a cast.
0:31:40 We put our points down.
0:31:42 What was negotiable, what was non-negotiable?
0:31:44 Then we went to our agents and managers with that,
0:31:47 and then they got together collectively,
0:31:49 and then they went to the producers.
0:31:50 At what point was this?
0:31:51 Was this before the transfer to Broadway?
0:31:54 Yeah, this was when we were negotiating
0:31:55 the Broadway contract.
0:31:57 What were you getting paid at playwrights per week?
0:31:59 1200, I think.
0:32:01 So to some kid who’s listening to you and saying,
0:32:05 “Oh, yeah, I’d like to have a hit like that
0:32:07 and an interesting character like that and a life like that.”
0:32:11 How would you advise them about the actual career prospects
0:32:14 of paying rent and living and maybe having a family and so on?
0:32:19 That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot
0:32:21 because my girlfriend and I were having those discussions.
0:32:24 She’s getting to an age, I’m getting to an age
0:32:27 where it’s like, okay, we live together.
0:32:29 Are we gonna have a kid?
0:32:30 Are we gonna get married?
0:32:31 Like, what’s the deal?
0:32:33 I want those things, for sure.
0:32:35 But I gotta get a series.
0:32:37 Even if you’re in a hit on Broadway, it’s hard.
0:32:41 Unfortunately, if you just wanna be a theater artist,
0:32:44 you have to live a certain lifestyle.
0:32:47 I don’t wanna live that lifestyle.
0:32:49 I wanna live a different lifestyle.
0:32:52 I wanna have a house.
0:32:53 I wanna be able to put my kids through college.
0:32:55 I wanna be able to do all of that by my dog,
0:32:58 really fancy dog food ’cause she’s really stingy
0:33:00 about eating kibble.
0:33:02 After this show, I wanna get like on a HBO series
0:33:07 where I’m on 10 episodes or 13 episodes
0:33:10 and I’m making tens of thousands of dollars per episode
0:33:15 so I can afford the life that I’ve decided
0:33:18 and I’m not ashamed of wanting.
0:33:21 – Do you think most people who come to New York
0:33:23 and buy one or two Broadway tickets,
0:33:26 do you think they assume that the average performer
0:33:30 is making a lot more money
0:33:31 than the average performer actually is?
0:33:33 – Probably.
0:33:34 I also think it depends on who you are, right?
0:33:36 I’ve heard crazy stories of Hugh Jackman making,
0:33:39 I don’t know, a million dollars a week or something
0:33:41 or getting a certain cut of the box office.
0:33:44 I’m not ragging on Hugh Jackman, he’s great.
0:33:46 But also again, lifestyle, he has a lifestyle
0:33:49 and he can’t just take a year out of his life
0:33:52 and do Broadway and not get paid a million dollars a week.
0:33:54 – Hugh Jackman did recently star
0:33:58 in a Broadway revival of The Music Man.
0:34:01 For more than a year, he did eight shows a week.
0:34:04 His salary was never made public
0:34:06 but a million dollars a week would seem high
0:34:09 industry people we’ve spoken with
0:34:10 put the likely figure at around $300,000,
0:34:14 although that was likely augmented
0:34:16 by a share of the box office.
0:34:18 But for most people working on Broadway,
0:34:21 the economics are tough.
0:34:23 I went back to stereophonic producer John Johnson.
0:34:27 If you read the newspapers and even the trades
0:34:31 about the economics of producing live theater these days,
0:34:34 the last, let’s call it five years especially,
0:34:37 it’s easy to come to the conclusion
0:34:38 that live theater is basically dying.
0:34:40 It’s too expensive to produce.
0:34:42 The audiences are not the same or are not returning.
0:34:45 There are too many countervailing forces.
0:34:46 Unions have too much leverage.
0:34:48 The theater owners have too much leverage.
0:34:51 There are many, many, many other media options
0:34:54 that audiences are taking advantage of.
0:34:56 You sound, John, like the first person I’ve spoken with
0:34:59 who doesn’t exude that kind of death rattle.
0:35:04 – Yeah, it’s a little dramatic.
0:35:05 When I started in the business,
0:35:07 my first boss was a legendary producer
0:35:08 by the name of Liz McCann.
0:35:10 She had worked in the theater for almost 60 years.
0:35:13 She used to talk about the late ’70s,
0:35:15 the time period of which the same thing was being said.
0:35:19 New York was told to drop dead.
0:35:21 The Bronx was burning.
0:35:22 Crime was up.
0:35:23 The theaters were being torn down.
0:35:25 That was a way worse time than what we’re talking about now.
0:35:28 And yet at the same time,
0:35:30 what came out of that afterwards was in the ’80s,
0:35:33 a massive boom.
0:35:34 It was the British invasion.
0:35:36 It was Lloyd Webber.
0:35:37 It was Cameron McIntosh coming in with these massive shows.
0:35:40 That’s what came out of that period of the late ’70s.
0:35:43 The other example I’d like to give is the financial crash.
0:35:46 What we went through in late 2008, 2009, 2010,
0:35:49 I think way worse than what we’re dealing with now
0:35:52 from a standpoint of fundraising drying up,
0:35:55 shows having to close prematurely.
0:35:57 14 shows closed at the top of 2009 right after the crash.
0:36:02 It was almost worse than the pandemic
0:36:03 because everyone stayed home and saved money.
0:36:06 Or at least now, what they want to see is different.
0:36:09 But if they do really want to see something,
0:36:12 whether it be Daniel Radcliffe and Mary Lou Roelong
0:36:15 or Sarah Paulson or Jeremy Strong, they will pay for it.
0:36:19 Is it challenging?
0:36:20 Yes, are we dealing with costs going up?
0:36:23 Yes, are we dealing with not being able to figure out
0:36:27 how to get the audiences to the shows
0:36:30 and how to entice them in a world
0:36:32 where you can’t just take ads on television anymore
0:36:35 because no one’s watching traditional television.
0:36:38 How is Stereophonic being marketed
0:36:41 and sold differently now than it might have been 20 years ago?
0:36:45 Oh, it’s almost entirely all digital now.
0:36:47 It’s all mobile.
0:36:48 It’s all through Meta.
0:36:49 It’s all through Instagram, Facebook.
0:36:51 We do still take the traditional behavioral banner ads
0:36:54 that follow you around the internet.
0:36:56 We still do some prints, but not a ton.
0:36:59 We have dabbled into television,
0:37:00 but we’re taking specific ads.
0:37:02 We’re not taking giant flights with, you know,
0:37:05 multiple spots on Good Morning America to the Today Show,
0:37:07 which was always your bread and butter.
0:37:09 Because again, the audience that you were going for,
0:37:12 that demographic that was coming six, eight times a year
0:37:15 from the suburbs were the same folks who would, you know,
0:37:18 get the kids off to school and then turn on the Today Show
0:37:20 and watch the commercials kind of roll by and go,
0:37:23 “Oh, that’s show. I’ve heard of that.
0:37:24 I need to go see that.”
0:37:25 Now it’s all in your hand.
0:37:26 How do the costs of a digital first marketing
0:37:29 and advertising campaign compare to the old school,
0:37:32 and what’s the ROI compared to the old school?
0:37:35 – The ROI is much easier to figure out
0:37:38 because you can actually track people.
0:37:41 Our zip code reporting has way more sophisticated
0:37:44 now than it was before,
0:37:45 whereas you had to blanket the market with something
0:37:48 and then you didn’t see a direct correlation.
0:37:51 Now it’s less things,
0:37:54 but you can still see how your wraps jump
0:37:57 due to specific things of press,
0:37:58 like a CBS Sunday morning piece,
0:38:00 or if your stars are on Morning Joe,
0:38:03 there are fewer things that give you that pop,
0:38:05 but at least you know if I’m on Morning Joe,
0:38:07 then we’re going to have a good day at the box office.
0:38:10 (upbeat music)
0:38:12 – There are other ways in which the theater industry
0:38:16 intersects with the larger entertainment ecosystem.
0:38:19 Here again is the producer, Sonia Friedman.
0:38:22 – If you look across Broadway
0:38:24 and the West End over the last 50 years,
0:38:27 a lot of the new shows have come from studios,
0:38:31 Universal, Fox, MGM,
0:38:33 and Netflix are going to be no different in that respect.
0:38:37 – Friedman has already worked with Netflix twice.
0:38:40 The first was turning a Netflix property,
0:38:43 Stranger Things, into a live theatrical show in London.
0:38:47 – With Stranger Things, actually we went to them.
0:38:50 It was a very, very specific challenge
0:38:53 about can you put sci-fi on stage?
0:38:56 It’s a actually surprisingly emotional story
0:38:59 about a little kid who’s metaphorically
0:39:02 and literally got a monster growing inside of him,
0:39:04 and how does he beat this monster?
0:39:07 It’s a very, very simple yet universal tale we’re telling,
0:39:10 but we also wanted to see whether we could go for it,
0:39:13 technically, go for it in the most extraordinary way.
0:39:17 Netflix loved the idea and they became our partner on it.
0:39:21 – And theater for them is relatively cheap,
0:39:24 I mean, considering their scale.
0:39:25 – I would have thought so, but it’s all relative to me.
0:39:29 When Stranger Things comes to Broadway,
0:39:31 they will be our partners and I have to make sure
0:39:34 that the financial model still makes sense.
0:39:37 – So that’s one way for Netflix to be involved
0:39:41 in live theater, but there is another way.
0:39:45 Consider Sonia Friedman’s recent production
0:39:47 of the play Patriots on Broadway.
0:39:50 It was written for the stage by Peter Morgan,
0:39:53 best known for creating the Netflix series,
0:39:55 The Crown, and Netflix is a big investor
0:39:59 in the Broadway show.
0:40:00 – With Patriots, that was absolutely driven by Pete Morgan,
0:40:04 and Netflix wanted to support the Patriots journey.
0:40:08 I think they’re gonna make it into a film or something,
0:40:10 but I can say no more beyond that.
0:40:12 – Would you like to be involved in turning
0:40:14 stereophonic into a film or series?
0:40:16 – Of course, I think it would be a fantastic series.
0:40:21 – I’ve heard a little talk about you producing
0:40:23 more TV film.
0:40:25 Would you like to be a full-blown producer in that realm?
0:40:28 – I would do it, but I don’t want it to be what I do,
0:40:31 because I love theater every single night.
0:40:34 Who knows what’s gonna happen.
0:40:36 Seeing the audience, just feeling and hearing.
0:40:39 When I make TV, I’ve done a few.
0:40:41 It’s really exciting, but then it’s done.
0:40:44 It’s always slightly anticlimactic.
0:40:47 When it comes out on telly and you go, oh, that’s it.
0:40:51 You sit there at home on your own with a box of popcorn,
0:40:56 and then you look at Twitter and go, okay, so that’s happened.
0:40:59 Where’s the adrenaline?
0:41:00 Where’s that extraordinary cortisol hit
0:41:05 that you get with theater, which is you literally walk in,
0:41:09 and my heart beats faster, and it’s terrifying,
0:41:14 and it’s wonderful.
0:41:15 I mean, particularly with shows
0:41:16 which have a lot of technical challenges,
0:41:18 is it gonna go wrong tonight?
0:41:20 Are we gonna get through it?
0:41:22 When I have nine, 10 shows running at any one time,
0:41:25 I will not be able to go to sleep in London
0:41:27 until the curtain’s at least gone up in New York,
0:41:31 just so I know that’s happened.
0:41:33 And then I’ll usually wake up in middle of the night
0:41:36 just to check that they’ve gone okay.
0:41:38 And that’s how I’ve lived my life for 20 years.
0:41:41 And then we had the pandemic.
0:41:43 And I think that everything came into stark relief
0:41:47 as we all know for the world.
0:41:48 – And you had just opened Leopoldstadt,
0:41:51 the Tom Stoppard play in the West End.
0:41:53 – Just opened Leopoldstadt
0:41:54 exactly about three or four days beforehand.
0:41:57 I had another 17 shows across the world.
0:42:00 It was obviously sort of shocking.
0:42:04 And frankly, as I talk about it now,
0:42:06 I still can’t quite believe it happened to us all.
0:42:10 And I got quite heavily involved in the lobbying.
0:42:13 – Yeah, I read that you lobbied the UK government
0:42:16 for COVID relief funding for the theater sector.
0:42:19 – Very much so, yes.
0:42:20 It was a moment where I had to actually figure out
0:42:24 what theater meant to the world.
0:42:26 Why theater?
0:42:29 Why culture?
0:42:30 Why arts?
0:42:32 When we were going through this absolute crisis,
0:42:37 the very model for us,
0:42:39 which was bringing a group of people together
0:42:41 in a closed space, indoors,
0:42:45 sharing an experience,
0:42:47 that whole idea was under threat.
0:42:50 But in those dark hours,
0:42:54 it became quite clear to me
0:42:56 that theater will never, ever, ever, ever die.
0:43:01 It’s absolutely essential for our mental health
0:43:06 and our ability to communicate with one another,
0:43:11 our ability to have empathy.
0:43:14 We do something beautiful and unique,
0:43:18 which is we allow people to come together,
0:43:20 share an experience, go on a journey,
0:43:23 think about the world in a slightly different way.
0:43:25 And in the majority of cases,
0:43:27 feel a little bit better about the world.
0:43:30 And then, you know, I put on my political lobbying hat.
0:43:34 We also feed the economy.
0:43:37 We also feed the ecosystem around the towns and the cities.
0:43:41 And we feed the bars and the restaurants
0:43:43 and we create employment.
0:43:46 We are more than just a luxury.
0:43:48 You know, we’re at the center of every policy.
0:43:51 And I’m talking to the Labour Party at the moment
0:43:53 in the UK about all of this,
0:43:55 because they get it, they get it.
0:43:57 – And they’ll soon be in power.
0:43:59 – Oh, I expect so.
0:44:00 And in America and in the UK,
0:44:02 the fact that theater and artists
0:44:05 have to still fight for their relevance,
0:44:07 the fact that we still have to fight for the right
0:44:11 for children, to see shows, to read plays,
0:44:15 to study art, to study music in schools
0:44:19 is so short-sighted because, you know,
0:44:22 almost every great person who walks the planet
0:44:24 has had some experience as they grow up
0:44:27 of being in a school show, being in a school play,
0:44:30 or going to watch one and it can change their lives.
0:44:33 – On that note, the changing of a life.
0:44:39 I went back to David Ajmi.
0:44:42 He had been writing plays for a couple of decades
0:44:44 in relative obscurity until Stereophonic,
0:44:47 which itself took 11 years to write.
0:44:50 – The whole thing was written very freely
0:44:52 and very experimentally.
0:44:53 And I didn’t know what the structure would be early on.
0:44:56 I just had these scenes
0:44:57 and I didn’t know how they’d go together
0:44:59 or what they would be.
0:45:01 I don’t know.
0:45:02 I just follow my intuitions when I’m working.
0:45:04 So much of it is non-rational.
0:45:06 It is just me kind of like tracking these characters
0:45:08 and saying, let’s see how far I can push this.
0:45:11 – It seems to me that the way you’re describing writing
0:45:14 is, and maybe this is just ’cause the way
0:45:16 I think about writing, having been a writer,
0:45:18 my whole life is that, you know, this is how you write.
0:45:21 You look for ideas, you find a whole lot.
0:45:25 Most of them are terrible.
0:45:26 You throw them away and then you sit with them
0:45:28 and you let the unconscious come in
0:45:31 and then you keep doing research
0:45:33 and thinking and talking to people.
0:45:34 But then what you try to create is an original thing.
0:45:37 Whereas much of the theater that I’ve been seeing
0:45:41 over the past year, especially in pursuit of this series
0:45:44 that we’re working on, feels,
0:45:46 what’s a non-pejorative way, constructed.
0:45:50 I understand there’s a big market for that,
0:45:52 probably a much bigger market for that
0:45:53 than there is for your kind of writing.
0:45:55 But can you just offer a sort of defense
0:45:57 of your kind of writing for the stage?
0:46:00 I mean, we’re used to that kind of writing in literature.
0:46:03 But I feel like most people who think of theater
0:46:06 don’t think of a show that’s as,
0:46:09 not just thoughtful, but like intense.
0:46:11 It’s an intense piece of work.
0:46:12 It’s also fun and funny and weird.
0:46:14 But why is there not more of this?
0:46:17 – I don’t know.
0:46:18 I mean, I love Goethe and German Romanticism.
0:46:21 – I can hear all the commercial producers’ ears
0:46:24 dropping down now.
0:46:25 Nevermind.
0:46:26 – And Strinberg and stuff like that.
0:46:29 O’Neill, I mean, the great plays,
0:46:31 the great capital G great plays
0:46:33 are very, very freaking intense plays.
0:46:37 They go to the bottom and I think most playwrights
0:46:39 don’t have the courage to do it
0:46:42 or they don’t have it in their genetic material.
0:46:45 They don’t have it in them.
0:46:47 And I always didn’t.
0:46:48 I always felt like a weirdo.
0:46:50 ‘Cause in the end, that stuff is really scary
0:46:52 and it does scare away theaters.
0:46:54 People don’t always wanna feel too much.
0:46:57 They wanna go home and have their dinner after a show.
0:46:59 They don’t wanna be ripped open.
0:47:02 And I do think the function of art
0:47:04 is to discomfort the comforted.
0:47:07 And so that’s what I’m gonna do.
0:47:10 ♪ Ooh, I’ll just call me when ♪
0:47:15 ♪ It’s time to start again ♪
0:47:20 – Thanks to David Ajmi along with all the performers
0:47:25 and producers of Stereophonic who spoke with us.
0:47:28 As I mentioned, we are working on a broader series
0:47:31 about the economics of live theater
0:47:32 that’ll probably come out sometime in the fall or winter.
0:47:36 In the meantime, I would love to hear your feedback
0:47:38 on these Stereophonic episodes
0:47:41 and what you’d like to learn about in that later series.
0:47:44 Our address is radio@freakonomics.com.
0:47:48 Also, feel free to tell your friends and family
0:47:50 to listen to Freakonomics Radio.
0:47:52 That is a great way to support the podcasts you love.
0:47:55 Coming up next time on the show.
0:47:59 – I mean, this is not just a mistake.
0:48:01 This is a crime and this is something horrible, right?
0:48:04 – Imagine you are a big brand
0:48:06 that hired a celebrity endorser
0:48:09 and that celebrity does something terrible.
0:48:12 What happens next?
0:48:14 Not what you might think.
0:48:17 That’s next time on the show.
0:48:18 Until then, take care of yourself.
0:48:20 And if you can, someone else too.
0:48:23 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
0:48:27 You can find our entire archive
0:48:28 on any podcast app also at Freakonomics.com,
0:48:32 where we publish transcripts and show notes.
0:48:35 This episode was produced by Alina Cullman.
0:48:37 Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman,
0:48:39 Dalvin Abouaghi, Eleanor Osborn, Elsa Hernandez,
0:48:43 Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnson,
0:48:46 Julie Canfer, Lyric Bowditch, Morgan Levy,
0:48:49 Neil Coruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Sara Lilly,
0:48:51 Teo Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.
0:48:54 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by the Hitchhikers.
0:48:57 Our composer is Louise Guerra.
0:48:59 Additional music in this episode by Will Butler,
0:49:01 Justin Craig, and the cast of “Stereophonic.”
0:49:04 As always, thank you for listening.
0:49:06 If anybody ever says no to me,
0:49:13 that’s when the green monster comes out.
0:49:16 Wait, the green monster is envies.
0:49:19 Is that what you mean?
0:49:20 No, sorry, the incredible Hulk.
0:49:26 The Freakonomics Radio Network,
0:49:28 the hidden side of everything.
0:49:30 Stitcher.
0:49:35 (gentle music)
0:49:37 you

0:00:00 I’m a reporter, a writer.
0:00:06 I try to answer questions, not unlike what you do, Steven, although our questions are
0:00:10 sometimes a bit dumber.
0:00:12 But sometimes they’re not.
0:00:13 Sometimes they’re smart.
0:00:14 That is PJ Vote.
0:00:16 He has been making podcasts for nearly as long as I have.
0:00:19 His shows are often about life on the internet and how technology changes us.
0:00:27 So your current show, Search Engine, despite the name, isn’t a show about life online
0:00:33 for the most part, is it?
0:00:35 No.
0:00:36 The reason it’s called Search Engine is because it’s a show where it’s a bit of a joke.
0:00:40 What is Search Engine supposed to be is like, you ask it a question and very cheaply and
0:00:44 very quickly a machine gives you an answer that might be pretty good.
0:00:47 We’re like a human-powered bespoke, incredibly expensive to run, very slow Search Engine.
0:00:53 It gives answers in layers and over time, as opposed to bang, here it is.
0:00:59 Yeah.
0:01:00 Yeah.
0:01:01 Oftentimes the answer is who can say.
0:01:02 But we give you human-level, complicated and complex answers.
0:01:08 Today, on Freakin’omics Radio, a bonus episode with PJ Vote and Search Engine.
0:01:14 It’s sort of about economics, the economics of a famous nightclub in Berlin.
0:01:20 I’d heard the basics.
0:01:22 A decommissioned power plant turned into a multi-story nightclub.
0:01:26 People talked about this place as a kind of grimy heaven and like traditional heaven.
0:01:32 Grimy heaven was also supposedly very hard to get into.
0:01:36 One guiding principle of our show is that just about anything can be interesting if you are
0:01:40 willing to look closely enough or from the right angle.
0:01:44 In this case, the door policy at a Berlin nightclub is connected to municipal tax laws,
0:01:51 for cold war and more.
0:01:54 But also, the Freakin’omics Radio crew doesn’t get to go clubbing very often, like never.
0:02:00 So thanks to Search Engine and PJ Vote for letting us tag along.
0:02:15 This is Freakin’omics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything.
0:02:21 With your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:02:32 So PJ, give me the genesis of this episode of Search Engine we’re about to hear.
0:02:37 Each of your episodes is built around a single question.
0:02:41 Where’d the question for this episode come from?
0:02:43 Okay, so two friends of mine, lovely young man, both kind of conscientious people.
0:02:51 Like straight laced, buttoned up, home before midnight, hard working professional guys.
0:02:56 They said they had a question which had sprung from a vacation they had been on and it was
0:03:00 an unusual vacation.
0:03:02 The two of them had flown eight hours from New York City to Germany to try to go to this
0:03:07 techno club called Burgheim.
0:03:09 Are you familiar with Burgheim?
0:03:12 Before you and I started talking about this conversation that we’re having now, I was
0:03:15 not familiar with Burgheim.
0:03:18 It used to be before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
0:03:20 It was a Soviet power plant in East Berlin, four stories tall, like a very imposing building.
0:03:26 More recently, it has become a techno nightclub and supposedly the techno nightclub, like
0:03:32 the most exclusive, fun, like everyone who loves this stuff wants to go to this place
0:03:38 before they die, a kind of mecca.
0:03:41 But the other thing about Burgheim is that it has the most strict and scary door policy
0:03:47 in the entire world.
0:03:49 They love to reject rich and famous people.
0:03:53 A lot of the people you think would be allowed into any room have not been allowed into this
0:03:56 room.
0:03:57 And if you want to try to get in, you have to wait in a line that on a good night, you’ll
0:04:01 stand in line for four hours.
0:04:03 On a bad night, you might stand in line for eight hours.
0:04:07 So these guys had taken an eight hour flight to Berlin to stand in a line for four to eight
0:04:13 hours for the chance to maybe get into this nightclub.
0:04:19 They actually stood in line three separate times.
0:04:22 Here are Chris and Dan describing to PJ how when you get to the front of the line, you
0:04:27 encounter the selector, the guy who decides whether you will be admitted into Burgheim.
0:04:33 So you get up and then there’s a number of calculations that are going on in your mind.
0:04:36 Do you look at the bouncer in the eye?
0:04:39 Do you look kind of at the ground?
0:04:41 Do you smile?
0:04:42 Do you keep a straight face?
0:04:43 Do you say anything?
0:04:46 And I think on this try, this was like our authentic friendly selves attempt.
0:04:51 I smiled at the guy he asked how many people were I said two, I was friendly.
0:04:56 I think I asked him how his night was going.
0:04:58 Did he answer?
0:04:59 No, of course not.
0:05:01 One of my calculations was whether or not to look like I was having fun and into the
0:05:06 music.
0:05:07 So I kind of like was dancing a little bit, but you know, very like minor movements.
0:05:13 And I don’t think that strategy worked.
0:05:17 So you walk up, you say, like, how’s your night?
0:05:20 He says nothing.
0:05:21 Is he just looking at you?
0:05:22 Is it he or he?
0:05:23 It’s a he.
0:05:24 There’s Sven, the main bouncer.
0:05:27 If Burgheim itself is the epitome of what you would think of East German old techno night
0:05:33 club, then Sven is the epitome of what you would think of as the bouncer, the lead bouncer
0:05:37 for that venue.
0:05:38 What does he look like?
0:05:39 A large man with a large number of tattoos and piercings on his face.
0:05:44 And there’s two others.
0:05:45 Apparently, there’s some sort of communication between the two of them, some sort of silent
0:05:49 communication.
0:05:50 But it’s not legible.
0:05:51 There’s only one amount of legible communication and that’s the decision.
0:05:55 And how do they communicate it to you?
0:05:57 It’s always one person they pull up at a time or a small group.
0:06:01 And sometimes they’re immediately rejected.
0:06:03 Like they don’t even get to say a word.
0:06:05 The bouncer just puts his hand out and they just keep walking.
0:06:09 Pretty subtle.
0:06:10 Yeah.
0:06:11 And they just point towards the street.
0:06:12 It’s not so much a point as an open palm out the direction that you should be going.
0:06:17 So the gesture you’re doing is actually the gesture one used to be like, welcome to my
0:06:20 home, but it’s welcome to not my home.
0:06:22 The arm goes out, the palms outstretched.
0:06:24 Like, look at this, you’re not going to a night club.
0:06:27 Yeah, I’d say you’re welcome to go anywhere else in Berlin.
0:06:34 You can probably tell from that part of the conversation how things went for Chris and
0:06:39 Dan.
0:06:40 Here’s PJ again.
0:06:41 They flew to Berlin.
0:06:42 They tried three separate times across three separate days to get into this place.
0:06:47 They were rejected each time.
0:06:49 And there was just something about the draw of, these guys are, they’re not people who
0:06:54 are like, if there’s a red velvet rope, I got to be on the other side of it.
0:06:57 They’re not sceny guys.
0:06:59 It was like the fact that they were willing to spend their vacation just standing in a
0:07:05 line and being told, no, maybe very curious about them and this place.
0:07:09 Okay.
0:07:10 So that’s what you need to know to get started here now from the search engine podcast is
0:07:14 an episode called, why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Burghain with PJ vote?
0:07:28 When we started all this last July, all I really knew about Burghain was that it was a Berlin
0:07:33 techno club and that it was very hard to get into, but I started researching.
0:07:39 The club itself maintains a very minimal footprint online.
0:07:42 200,000 people follow Burghain’s Instagram account, but the club has only ever posted
0:07:47 one photo in 2015, a picture of a sign that says in all caps, taking photos is not allowed.
0:07:53 The sign presumably from inside the club itself.
0:07:57 Burghain, like Vegas, claims that what happens there stays there, except in Burghain, that
0:08:02 seems to actually be true.
0:08:05 Some information about the club nevertheless has circulated.
0:08:08 The story of Burghain, as I now understand it, begins 30 years ago.
0:08:15 In the early 1990s, two Germans, Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufela, had begun hosting a men’s
0:08:21 only gay fetish party, sometimes at an abandoned air raid shelter.
0:08:26 After a few years, the party outgrew that bunker, the pair took over an abandoned railroad
0:08:31 depot.
0:08:32 At the railroad depot, they started a club called Ostgut.
0:08:36 Ostgut is legendary, open to people of all genders and sexualities, but still a space
0:08:41 run by and largely for gay men.
0:08:43 A den of hedonism where consenting adults supposedly engaged in all sorts of unusual
0:08:49 behavior, online at least one video survives from inside the club, but the video is pretty
0:09:01 tame.
0:09:02 It’s from July 2000, looks like camcorder footage, a grainily shot DJ hovers over a
0:09:07 console, twiddling knobs, while nearby, a crowd of German shadows rides under a strobe
0:09:13 light.
0:09:20 Ostgut may have lived forever, except the city wanted to build a big arena, so the railroad
0:09:26 depot was knocked down in 2003.
0:09:29 Burgheim was its reincarnation, the palace that replaced Ostgut, this time too big to
0:09:35 knock down.
0:09:36 A thermal power plant originally built by the Russians in the Soviet era, four floors,
0:09:42 on the very bottom floor, a dedicated basement gay club for men only, at the very top, a
0:09:48 bar with big windows opening onto a panoramic view of the city, on the floors in between
0:09:53 where the power turbines once sat, an enormous dark cavern, the main dance area, the entire
0:09:59 space governed by its own particular rules.
0:10:03 Burgheim is best known for one weekly party, club night.
0:10:23 Club night is a misnomer, because while the party starts Saturday evening, it continues
0:10:27 all the way until Monday morning without interruption.
0:10:30 A few books document the history of the scene that birthed this party.
0:10:33 I’ve found Tobias Rapps lost in sound to be particularly helpful.
0:10:38 He writes about how when Burgheim opened in 2004, the party was by and for Berliners,
0:10:43 but word soon spread internationally.
0:10:46 A European budget airline called EasyJet had just opened a new hub in Berlin, and other
0:10:51 Europeans started taking EasyJet flights to the city to come party.
0:10:56 The legend kept growing, eventually it grew large enough to draw Chris and Dan, two of
0:11:00 the many Americans who made the pilgrimage to techno mecca.
0:11:04 It was a marvel.
0:11:05 A three-day party, good enough to draw thousands of people, every weekend, people who would
0:11:10 fly to Germany without even a promise they would gain admittance.
0:11:15 That was club night at Burgheim.
0:11:19 Most of what people discuss online is not any of this.
0:11:22 Instead, they talk about Sven, the intimidating bouncer who Chris and Dan encountered and
0:11:27 then cowered in front of.
0:11:29 Sven Markhardt.
0:11:31 Sven Markhardt is a tall, imposing man in his early 60s with giant lip rings that look
0:11:37 like silver fangs.
0:11:39 His hair is slicked back in silver, tattoos of thorns cover much of his face.
0:11:44 He looks like a bad guy in a John Wick movie, and he has played a bad guy in a John Wick
0:11:48 movie.
0:11:49 That was just a cameo one time, though.
0:11:51 Sven has run security at Burgheim since club first opened 20 years ago.
0:11:55 Sven’s backstory, he grew up in East Berlin, the communist side of the wall, before it
0:11:59 fell.
0:12:00 There’s this one documentary, Berlin Bouncer, that profiles Sven.
0:12:09 In one scene, he gives a talk in front of a crowd.
0:12:11 He’s wearing all black, tinted glasses.
0:12:14 Sven discusses the early chapters of his life, how his teenage years were defined by the
0:12:18 feeling of being stuck outside a much more significant kind of door.
0:12:31 Sven saying, “We just wanted to see the other side of the wall.
0:12:34 We didn’t really want to leave home, we just wanted to find out.
0:12:37 What were we being deprived of?
0:12:39 What weren’t we allowed to see?”
0:12:41 Sven has said that as a young, gay punk rocker, living in East Berlin was risky.
0:12:46 He was frequently picked up by the secret police.
0:12:48 He was devoted to his photography career, but after the wall fell, he chose to stay on
0:12:53 the East Berlin side, and his art career stalled there.
0:12:56 Sven’s brother was a DJ, and Sven started working the door at his parties.
0:13:01 It turned out, Sven’s eye for people worked not just in photography, but also here.
0:13:06 He had a talent for deciding who should be let in.
0:13:10 He developed a reputation.
0:13:11 That’s why they chose him for Ausgut, and later for Burgheim.
0:13:16 The fact that this much of Sven’s biography exists in public, of course, goes entirely
0:13:21 against Burgheim’s secretive ethos, but Sven has continued to pursue his photography career,
0:13:27 and so every few years, when he has a new exhibition or a photo book, he talks to journalists.
0:13:33 Questions about his photography, which he wants to discuss, and questions about how to
0:13:37 get into Burgheim, which he has to tolerate.
0:13:40 Those are the terms under which the gatekeepers at places like the New York Times or GQ will
0:13:45 allow Sven entry, and understanding the way of these things, he obliges.
0:13:51 Sven, the man with the answer to our question, what was the bouncer at Burgheim scanning
0:13:58 you for?
0:13:59 I should say, I emailed Sven and requested an interview.
0:14:02 I’ve never been less surprised to not get a reply, but in the documentary, there’s
0:14:06 this prickly moment where the interviewer seems to have directly asked Sven the rules
0:14:11 of the door.
0:14:12 Sven responds, not with helpful tips about what shade of black to wear.
0:14:22 Instead, he says sternly, “We don’t need to question the rules that are in place.”
0:14:28 He does allow that, as a selector, his responsibility is to only let people in who, once they join
0:14:34 the party, won’t impede the freedom and self-expression of the people who are already
0:14:39 inside.
0:14:46 It makes sense, but it does not provide clues, and in any situation in which official sources
0:14:52 remain this tight-lipped, speculation will reign, and it does here, mostly on TikTok.
0:14:58 They’re a cottage industry of people who claim to have gotten through the door, now
0:15:02 style themselves as helpful experts, explaining what exactly they believe Sven is scanning
0:15:07 for when he looks at people like Chris and Dan, trying to get inside the mind of a 62-year-old
0:15:13 gay German ex-punk.
0:15:15 Be really casual, don’t be flamboyant, don’t speak too much.
0:15:19 Don’t talk too loud in the queue, and, under no circumstances, engage in law-tar.
0:15:26 Literally, just basically be as casual and blended as possible in order to get in.
0:15:31 It’s impossible to know if any of these people are actually telling the truth, again, you
0:15:34 can’t record inside a burghine, which means you just have to take their word for it.
0:15:54 The advice offered by these supposed gurus frankly does not feel all that usable.
0:15:59 Try to get in or maybe don’t.
0:16:05 My favorite artifact of all the online burghine speculation is this website called burghintrainer.com
0:16:12 that will actually drop you into a surprisingly high-res simulation of the burghine line.
0:16:18 The site takes control of your webcam and then scans your face, analyzing your emotions through
0:16:23 your expressions, how angry, sad, euphoric your face is, giving a virtual simulation
0:16:29 of Sven’s gaze, and then the first-person video virtually walks you step by step up
0:16:36 to the doors of burghine.
0:16:38 The music gets louder as you get closer.
0:16:41 The website warns you that Sven will ask you three questions, so I did it.
0:16:48 When I arrived at the virtual door, a German man, presumably an actor playing Sven, asked
0:16:53 “Is this your first time here?”
0:16:55 I said “Yes.”
0:16:56 “We’ve already played?”
0:16:57 He asked “Do you know who’s DJing tonight?”
0:17:00 I said “Yes.”
0:17:01 “Did you take anything?”
0:17:02 He asked “Whether I’d taken drugs?”
0:17:04 I said “Nine.”
0:17:07 After a moment of scanning, the virtual bouncer told me “Not good today.”
0:17:12 And then made the hand gesture toward the street.
0:17:16 The same hand gesture Chris and Dan had gotten.
0:17:19 To be honest with you, this rejection by a fake bouncer, it hurt my real feelings.
0:17:24 I’ll tell you something about myself that won’t surprise you.
0:17:28 I’ve never been considered cool.
0:17:30 I know cool people.
0:17:31 I’m not against coolness, I just don’t possess it.
0:17:35 I’m uncool enough that I often ask the cool people I know to explain to me why certain
0:17:40 things are cool right now.
0:17:42 How did we decide big pants are back in style?
0:17:45 If you have to ask, you’re not cool, and I do have to ask, both professionally and
0:17:49 just because of my personality.
0:17:52 So I’m not cool, and I’m old enough to be okay with that.
0:17:56 But this was a little different.
0:17:58 At Berghain, where Sven ruled, it seemed to me that the source of his power lay partly
0:18:03 in his refusal to explain himself.
0:18:06 My job as a journalist was the opposite, to understand and explain.
0:18:10 And I just couldn’t resist the challenge of trying to understand something that was
0:18:14 designed to obscure itself.
0:18:17 That was why, even after all this internet sleuthing and documentary watching, we would
0:18:22 continue digging for the better part of a year.
0:18:24 We’d talk to lots of people, we’d read too many books devoted to the telemedic study of
0:18:28 German techno, its origins and sub-genres.
0:18:31 And in the end, we’d emerge with an answer.
0:18:35 What was Berghain scanning for, and why?
0:18:38 How would a place like this come to pay?
0:19:07 In America, in the circles I run in, people complain a lot about capitalism.
0:19:15 I don’t think they’re bothered by the exchange of goods and services.
0:19:18 I think it’s their shorthand way of saying everything here is just too driven by profit.
0:19:23 Even things that start out good can be squeezed to death by our ceaseless desire to bring
0:19:27 out every possible dollar.
0:19:30 In Berlin, a place where until recently capitalism and socialism both operated, in Berlin, it
0:19:36 feels like something else is going on.
0:19:38 The nightlife industry there brings in $1.5 billion dollars a year, but they’re strange
0:19:43 dollars.
0:19:45 The crown jewel, Berghain, operates by turning away thousands of paying customers.
0:19:50 And despite demand, it keeps its ticket prices pretty low, all while existing in a building
0:19:55 that is 37,600 square feet in a very hip neighborhood.
0:20:00 And not only does this all seem to work, it’s worked for a long time.
0:20:04 That doesn’t happen in nightlife.
0:20:05 Don’t stick around.
0:20:07 Studio 54 was open for less than three years.
0:20:10 Berghain is on its 20th.
0:20:12 And people attribute a lot of that success to Berghain’s strict and strange door policy.
0:20:18 You can tell the story of that door as a story about culture, about cool, but cool we know
0:20:24 never explains itself.
0:20:26 So let’s get inside Berghain from a different direction.
0:20:28 I’m going to tell you the story not about DJs and bouncers, but about lawyers and lobbyists,
0:20:35 but the municipal regulation and policy that allows this club to exist the way it does.
0:20:41 A story that begins in 1949.
0:20:45 Hi, can you hear me?
0:20:46 Hey, I hear you well.
0:20:48 How’s it going over there?
0:20:49 Well, well, well.
0:20:52 Lutz Leitzenring.
0:20:53 I’d first heard about him from one of my best friends, Kay Burke, a nightclub founder herself.
0:20:58 People in Berlin called Lutz the mayor of the city’s nightlife.
0:21:01 So did Kay explain who I am and what we’re up to over here?
0:21:05 I think she might, but it was also quite some time ago, so maybe you can fill me in again.
0:21:10 Yeah.
0:21:11 So I have this podcast called Search Engine where we just try to answer people’s questions
0:21:16 no matter how simple or complicated.
0:21:19 We do really serious stuff.
0:21:21 We just did something about fentanyl and the drug supply in America, but we also do really
0:21:26 silly stuff and kind of everything in between.
0:21:29 In what level are we here in this conversation?
0:21:32 We’re closer to silly, I think.
0:21:34 So we have these friends I want to tell you about who just didn’t get into Burghide and
0:21:38 are confused about it, but it’s sort of an excuse to tell the larger story about nightlife.
0:21:44 I think for people in the United States, it’s a place you go and you spend $500 on champagne,
0:21:49 and you know what I mean.
0:21:50 Or $10 on a can of beer without a glass.
0:21:55 Exactly.
0:21:56 Clubs like Loots call this style of nightclub bottles and models, shorthand for the economic
0:22:00 model that drives them.
0:22:02 Clubs like these are what most Americans think of when you say nightclub.
0:22:06 Spots that tend to make their money by enticing rich people to pay for tables and buy bottles
0:22:10 of champagne so that they can feel important.
0:22:13 The clubs are like little status factories.
0:22:16 In Berlin, though, that same word, nightclub, describes an entirely different operation
0:22:21 fueled by a different economic model.
0:22:23 Loots’s job is to protect that status quo.
0:22:26 He’s nightlife’s advocate in the offices of city bureaucrats.
0:22:30 The spokesperson for Berlin’s Club Commission.
0:22:33 I wanted Loots to tell me how Berlin’s unusual nightlife scene had come to be, and that story
0:22:39 is the story of two arguments.
0:22:42 The first argument takes place in the late 1940s.
0:22:45 Argument one is about a very specific rule, curfew.
0:22:49 In Berlin today, there is no curfew.
0:22:51 Members and clubs stay open as long as they want.
0:22:53 Can you tell me the story of how Berlin came to be a city with no curfew?
0:22:58 What is the origin story of that decision?
0:23:00 The decision is almost 80 years old, and it happened right after World War II.
0:23:07 In 1949, you had already a divided city between the Eastern sector and the Western sector.
0:23:12 The Eastern sector controlled by the Russians, and the Western sector controlled by the British,
0:23:17 the French, and the Americans.
0:23:19 In the Eastern part, there was a curfew at 10 p.m.
0:23:23 All the restaurants, bars, hotel bars, cabaret bars, they had to close at 10 p.m.
0:23:29 In the Eastern part, in the Western part, it was 9 p.m., so an hour earlier.
0:23:34 There was this, let’s say, representative of the hotels and restaurants of Berlin.
0:23:38 His name was Heinz Zellermeyer.
0:23:40 Heinz Zellermeyer.
0:23:42 There was no Club Commission back then.
0:23:44 Heinz was instead the deputy director of the Guild of Berlin Hotelliers.
0:23:50 In photos, Heinz has an enormous smile and combed back hair.
0:23:53 He looks like someone who held forth at a restaurant or two.
0:23:58 Heinz did not like the curfew.
0:24:00 He particularly did not like that his side of the city had an earlier curfew.
0:24:04 The person to complain to was General Howley of the U.S. Army, the American’s West Berlin
0:24:09 commandant.
0:24:10 A meeting was set, and Heinz supposedly came prepared.
0:24:14 The story is that he brought a bottle of whiskey to that meeting, so they met, and they were
0:24:20 talking about it, and General Howley said, “Yeah, the British and the French, they are
0:24:24 not really supporting any idea of losing this curfew.
0:24:28 They say it’s a security issue, so you have to give me an argument that I can give to
0:24:33 French and the British.”
0:24:34 The problem was that at that moment, in the Western part, the people had to go out of
0:24:37 the bar, and then they went to the Eastern sector for another hour, which was also not
0:24:41 really liked by the Americans.
0:24:43 He said, “If you kick Germans who are partying at a certain hour, you kick them out of the
0:24:48 street, you’re going to have a security issue, so you have to better find a solution for
0:24:52 it.”
0:24:53 It was a well-raised argument.
0:24:55 The Allies did not want drunk Westerners crossing East in search of a later last call.
0:25:00 And worse, there had been an emerging Cold War of curfews, with each side, the East and
0:25:05 the West, repeatedly extending an hour past each other to try to capture all the income
0:25:10 from drunk Berliners.
0:25:12 curfew would solve the security issue and win the night war.
0:25:16 General Howley was sold.
0:25:17 He said, “Okay, let’s try this out for two weeks, and since then, 1949, we have no curfew.”
0:25:23 Berlin, one of the rare cities that has no curfew at all.
0:25:28 In 1949, when the city permanently deleted its curfew, obviously, techno music did not
0:25:32 exist.
0:25:33 Raving was something people did in insane asylums.
0:25:37 If anyone was listening to music in a club late at night, it was probably jazz.
0:25:41 But this decision set Berlin on a path.
0:25:45 Nightlife is funded more than anything else via the sale of alcohol.
0:25:49 A city without a curfew can have a legal party that runs through the night, even that runs
0:25:53 multiple nights.
0:25:55 Half a century-ish later, techno will hit Berlin.
0:25:59 People will begin to throw raves in illegal spots without permits.
0:26:02 This will happen in a lot of cities at the same time, Detroit, New York, London.
0:26:07 But what makes Berlin different from those places is that here, many of those raves can
0:26:12 actually become legitimate businesses, can find permanent homes and clubs.
0:26:17 General Howley’s 1949 agreement is the first precondition for Klubnacht at Burgheim.
0:26:23 It sets the stage for a party that can last for three days.
0:26:27 But years later, as the scene starts to mature, a second argument takes place, an argument
0:26:32 which almost kills these nightclubs.
0:26:35 Argument two is about taxes.
0:26:40 In the early 2000s, Burgheim was a rising young club, alongside already-established
0:26:44 spots like Trissor and the Kit Kat Club.
0:26:48 And Berlin’s tax authority started to take a closer look at these places.
0:26:52 How much money were they bringing in?
0:26:54 Shouldn’t the city be getting a bigger cut?
0:26:57 Government tax agents walk into Burgheim, presumably without needing permission from
0:27:00 Sven.
0:27:01 They’re there documenting everything they see.
0:27:03 Asking a question, from a tax perspective, what is happening in these rooms?
0:27:09 In Germany, if you pay money for a ticket and enter a venue where music is played, you
0:27:14 may be having one of three different experiences.
0:27:17 You might be experiencing high culture, like opera, in which case the city will barely tax
0:27:21 the ticket.
0:27:23 You might be at a concert, like the Rolling Stones, in which case the city will moderately
0:27:27 tax the ticket.
0:27:29 Or you might be experiencing entertainment.
0:27:33 This happens in casinos, in porn theaters.
0:27:36 In that case, the city will take a big tax bite, almost 20%.
0:27:41 Before the tax officials began to take a closer look at the club scene, these venues had been
0:27:46 mostly taxed as concert venues.
0:27:48 But now, in 2008, the city started to ask pointed questions.
0:27:53 Was a DJ really a musician?
0:27:55 Was a techno show really like a concert?
0:28:01 The perception that people in government had says, “A DJ is not a concert.”
0:28:05 People are going there to have sex or to drink or to whatever, but not because of the DJ.
0:28:10 They even sent people to clubs and documented that people were not facing the artists.
0:28:16 They were talking to each other, stuff like that, to kind of prove the point that this
0:28:21 is not a concert.
0:28:22 Wow.
0:28:23 I’ve been to concerts where people were not facing the artists and talking to each other.
0:28:28 Exactly.
0:28:29 They said clubs is different, people go there to meet people, not because of the artists.
0:28:34 They don’t even know who’s playing these kind of argumentations.
0:28:37 Burgheim was the club that actually took this case all the way to the high courts.
0:28:42 Burgheim won.
0:28:43 The Burgheim, in the government’s books, was cemented as a concert venue, a place where
0:28:47 people went because they loved techno music.
0:28:50 Weirdly, this is one part of the answer to Chris and Dan’s questions.
0:28:54 What was the bouncer, Sven, scanning for at the door?
0:28:58 He needed to ensure they were true techno heads, not people there simply for entertainment.
0:29:03 That consideration, a funny side effect of the argument the club had had to make in court
0:29:07 years ago.
0:29:08 It may have been part of what filtered them out.
0:29:11 Chris and Dan, not true techno heads.
0:29:15 Burgheim’s victory in court meant that any German nightclub that could prove it was meeting
0:29:18 Burgheim’s cultural standards could be taxed like Burgheim.
0:29:23 Lower taxes meant they could keep their overhead low, the lower the overhead, the less pressure
0:29:27 to make money, the less pressure to make money, the more they could continue to keep their
0:29:31 nightclubs dedicated to preserving Berlin’s counterculture.
0:29:34 We’re going to come back to this strange court case and its consequences, but before
0:29:40 I left Lutz, I wanted to ask him specifically about Chris and Dan.
0:29:45 What was it about them, the way they looked, the way they dressed, that had signaled they
0:29:49 didn’t belong at Burgheim?
0:29:51 Just to be clear, Lutz does not represent Burgheim, but as spokesperson for the club
0:29:56 commission and as a Burgheim regular, I thought he might be able to help.
0:29:59 Can I show you a couple of photographs and you tell me if the person seems like…
0:30:03 I’m not a selector, so I can only give you my personal opinion.
0:30:06 Yeah.
0:30:07 Is it okay to ask you your opinion on it?
0:30:09 Yeah, I’m sure.
0:30:10 Of course.
0:30:11 Okay.
0:30:12 This is one person.
0:30:13 Well, very friendly, maybe queer person, very soft, happy, he’s wearing some kind of top
0:30:23 top that doesn’t really say anything.
0:30:26 It’s too generic of a top, the vest.
0:30:31 I think it looks authentic to him, but this person looked very innocent.
0:30:37 And you also want to save some people for getting into something that they maybe don’t
0:30:44 expect.
0:30:45 Okay, so this is the person he went with?
0:30:49 Yeah.
0:30:50 I would probably send them to Schwartz.
0:30:52 It’s our oldest, best known gay club, and that’s the perfect vibe for those two guys.
0:31:00 Because they don’t seem like techno guys to you, they seem like gay guys who are going
0:31:04 out clubbing.
0:31:05 They don’t look like hard standing in the middle of a sweaty club and going for hours
0:31:12 and enjoying this.
0:31:14 And they’re standing more like having a chat.
0:31:17 And that’s okay to have some of those folks in the venue, but it’s really about getting
0:31:22 out of your inner self and showing your animalistic side of yourself.
0:31:28 For very good reason, we don’t celebrate the idea that you should judge people based
0:31:32 on how they look on the outside.
0:31:34 Those judgments often lead us astray.
0:31:36 And yet, Lutz from a photo could tell Chris and Dan were after respectful, healthy, wholesome
0:31:44 partying, not the sort of darkness that occurs in Burghine’s techno dungeons.
0:31:50 They didn’t belong here.
0:31:51 They belonged, he’s suspected, at another place called Schwartz.
0:31:55 I wondered what Chris and Dan would make of that judgment.
0:31:58 So later, I asked.
0:32:01 Chris told me Schwartz?
0:32:03 They loved Schwartz.
0:32:04 It was the club they’d ended up at after being rejected from Burghine.
0:32:08 Berlin, this magical city, had somehow sent them to the place where they really belonged.
0:32:14 Lutz was not a selector, but he did seem to have a selector’s eye.
0:32:19 Your read is so good.
0:32:20 Chris, who I know better, he’s a lovely, he’s one of my favorite people to spend time with.
0:32:24 If I were having a party, what was really important that someone danced in the middle
0:32:28 of the dance floor for eight hours, he would perhaps not make the cut for that party?
0:32:32 I think the first question you have to ask yourself, are you a participant or are you
0:32:37 a visitor?
0:32:39 And it shouldn’t sound sophisticated or arrogant.
0:32:42 It’s just like a club.
0:32:44 The definition of club is being part of a club.
0:32:49 If you’re not part of the club, why should you being able to enter?
0:32:53 I think the idea of just buying myself in is the opposite of a club, what it should
0:32:58 actually be.
0:32:59 A club should bring people together who have similar interests, similar preferences.
0:33:05 A club should bring together people of similar interests.
0:33:08 Absolutely.
0:33:09 But whatever you’re someone who doesn’t belong, but still wants to just go check it out.
0:33:14 Is there a way to sneak in?
0:33:15 Is there some other way into Burgheim that is not going through the bouncer?
0:33:20 Lutz did have advice about this.
0:33:22 My tip that I usually give is make a plan of exploring Berlin, maybe from the outskirts.
0:33:30 Go to venues that are not very known.
0:33:32 Go to places that are somehow interesting for you because you did your research and you
0:33:39 saw some artists that you want to see and yet they’re playing, so go there.
0:33:42 And you get in very easy because venues that are not very known don’t have this kind of
0:33:47 level of selection.
0:33:49 Usually there’s not even a queue.
0:33:51 And then you get friends with the bartenders, you make friends with the DJs there.
0:33:55 And you have an amazing time in an unknown venue with unknown artists, basically.
0:34:02 And the next time you’re coming, you’re going to reach out to them.
0:34:06 And because they liked you or they connected to you, they will ask you to start in their
0:34:11 home with dinner, maybe you go to a bar, you make a no-friend, and even maybe they make
0:34:16 sure that you get on a guest list of some venue that they are going at that night.
0:34:21 But I think it’s part of that journey that you also have to make to be part of the scene.
0:34:28 Lutz said the process he’s describing, this is the real way into Klubnacht.
0:34:33 Make yourself a part of the scene.
0:34:35 That line outside Burgheim, he said, that’s for people who haven’t been able to or who
0:34:39 haven’t known to try.
0:34:42 While Lutz was saying this to me, I was nodding yes furiously, my noggin like a broken bobblehead.
0:34:47 Of course it all made sense.
0:34:49 And as a person obsessed with belonging and exclusion, I was lapping it all up.
0:34:55 We finished our conversation.
0:34:57 We hung up, and then, not long after, this spell of Lutz’s idea dissipated.
0:35:04 What were we talking about?
0:35:06 If you wanted to visit the most exclusive nightclub in the world, go to Germany and
0:35:10 start methodically befriending Germans in the city’s electronic music scene.
0:35:14 Okay.
0:35:15 Normally, that would have been the end of things.
0:35:20 And perhaps it should have been the end of things.
0:35:23 But not long after this, a friend of mine, an American, asked me a question.
0:35:29 They were celebrating a big milestone in their life, and they wanted to do it in Germany.
0:35:33 In Berlin, actually.
0:35:34 They wanted to spend some time there, perhaps even try to see some of the city’s famous
0:35:38 nightlife.
0:35:39 Did that sound like fun?
0:35:40 Could I make some time away from work?
0:35:42 Yes, it did.
0:35:43 No, I couldn’t.
0:35:45 I bought myself a plane ticket.
0:35:49 That again was PJ Vote, with the first part of a two-part story to hear what happened
0:35:54 after he got to Berlin.
0:35:56 Go get Search Engine in your podcast app.
0:35:59 I’ll be talking to PJ a bit more after the break.
0:36:14 The Bergheim Nightclub sits at the intersection of what used to be East and West Berlin.
0:36:20 Its name comes from the two districts on either side, Kreuzberg in the West and Friedrichsheim
0:36:25 in the East.
0:36:26 PJ Vote’s last name, which is spelled V-O-G-T, is also German.
0:36:32 Vote is referred to some sort of feudal landowner, kind of the middle manager of whatever the
0:36:39 feudal era.
0:36:40 It was not a very high status position, but high status enough that people might not like
0:36:43 you.
0:36:44 Do you feel you have a little bit of ancestral, if only impressionistic, connection to your
0:36:49 German roots?
0:36:50 I didn’t think so until I went, and I was not expecting to feel anything at all.
0:36:56 And I felt so much in a way that kind of shocked me, actually.
0:37:00 When did you first go to Germany?
0:37:02 I actually went on a reporting trip for this story.
0:37:07 This was the first time you’d been to Germany?
0:37:09 Okay, that’s not entirely true.
0:37:10 I went once as a 17-year-old, you could do that Euro rail thing.
0:37:15 And so I did that for a minute, but I didn’t crack the surface of the city in any meaningful
0:37:19 way.
0:37:20 And this was the first time where I really felt like, I don’t know, I felt the weight
0:37:25 of the history.
0:37:26 I felt this feeling that Berlin is a place that is both, I hate when people over generalize
0:37:31 about places that they visit for a week, but I thought these are people who believe in
0:37:36 order and following rules, sometimes to great historical tragedy, but who also, like everything
0:37:42 always exists in balance, and it’s also a place where people love to let loose and break
0:37:48 rules.
0:37:49 And I felt like I could feel both of those forces in a way that felt very alive to me.
0:37:54 Was it a place that you felt oddly at home you’re saying?
0:37:57 A little bit, yeah, which really surprised me because I tend to be skeptical about a
0:38:02 lot of claims that like, are memories or history or somehow encoded genetically.
0:38:07 Like I just never experienced that feeling.
0:38:09 And so when other people talked about it, I was like, oh, that’s great for you, but
0:38:12 I never expected to feel it.
0:38:13 And I felt both, I felt, I got there and like, I’m not Jewish.
0:38:18 My grandfather was Jewish and he converted, but I felt that stuff a little bit in a way
0:38:22 that I wouldn’t have thought.
0:38:23 And then I also felt German stuff in a way that I wouldn’t have thought.
0:38:27 It was like someone having a mildly religious experience who is a pretty profound atheist.
0:38:31 It really kind of wobbled me.
0:38:33 In retrospect, do you think one reason you chose to answer this question about Berghain
0:38:39 was because it afforded you the opportunity to go to your ancestral homeland as faint as
0:38:43 the connection might have been?
0:38:45 Yeah, although I would not have known that until you asked that question.
0:38:48 Did you spend time inside Berghain?
0:38:51 I did.
0:38:52 Weren’t?
0:38:53 I made a promise I wouldn’t talk about what I saw in detail, but I will say-
0:38:57 Who did you promise?
0:38:58 And do I care that you promised to them?
0:39:00 I promised myself, I was like, I really, so it’s funny.
0:39:02 When I walked up to the club, I felt like such a schmuck, Stephen.
0:39:06 So one of the things about Berlin that also I thought was really brilliant is that they
0:39:11 do not allow cell phones in any of these spaces.
0:39:14 Don’t put a sticker over your camera.
0:39:16 If you whip that thing out, you’re out.
0:39:18 You’re out right away.
0:39:19 It really makes spaces feel different to have people not be on their phones.
0:39:24 Berghain, its roots are as a gay club and its real roots are as like a really profoundly
0:39:30 dirty gay sex club.
0:39:32 And I’d say dirty without judgment.
0:39:35 There’s one section that is still devoted to that that is easier to get into, but the
0:39:38 dress code for like a Friday night is socks.
0:39:42 So I didn’t go.
0:39:44 But even the main club is like, it’s like a space that’s devoted to that.
0:39:47 And so you already feel like an interloper and the rule is sort of like this is a place
0:39:51 where adults can do whatever they want and where they’re guaranteed privacy and nobody
0:39:55 talks about it.
0:39:56 It’s basically like German cultures realize they really don’t like surveillance for very
0:39:59 specific historical reasons.
0:40:00 I found it to be like an entirely, all this just makes me sound like such a kook.
0:40:05 But like, I was like, this place is profound.
0:40:08 Like it feels profound to be in a place where like, I don’t know, really dedicated to complete
0:40:15 self-expression where nothing that happens gets judged.
0:40:21 I mean, I went on a Sunday afternoon, it was like 2pm.
0:40:25 There were Berliners there who were just that was their Sunday.
0:40:28 That’s what they always do.
0:40:29 Those aren’t people who wait in line.
0:40:30 There were people who probably been waiting for eight hours and just gotten in and were
0:40:33 so excited.
0:40:35 I saw more expression of ways a human body could look or be dressed than I’ve seen in
0:40:41 my whole life.
0:40:43 I mean, there were things that were happening that were like very burghine-y, like they
0:40:45 have something called a dark room, which is a room you can go in that’s very underlit
0:40:49 where people can do what they want to do to each other, usually gay man.
0:40:53 But there was also like, they have an ice cream parlor.
0:40:55 I had a really nice sorbet and a cappuccino.
0:41:00 So on Freakonomics Radio, we tend to talk to experts and academics, institutional people
0:41:06 with credentials of one sort or another.
0:41:09 What I love about your interviews is you will often interview people whose formal credentials
0:41:13 may not be that impressive, but they know a lot.
0:41:17 You are really good at getting them to teach us things that we might not find out any other
0:41:22 way.
0:41:23 That’s really nice to hear you say.
0:41:24 Yeah, I think we’re good at like, sometimes people might have a really specific experience
0:41:28 that has given them a really specific education and you just want to share that.
0:41:33 It’s weird.
0:41:34 This is not a thing I expected to be talking about today, but something that I got to
0:41:39 interview the serial team when they were launching their new season, and I asked them a bunch
0:41:44 of questions about their work, and I asked them the question I wanted to ask them, which
0:41:47 was, do you ever grapple with just the, what are we doing here of this?
0:41:54 Besides that it’s interesting and fun, why are we making this stuff every week?
0:41:59 And they were like, we’re doing journalism.
0:42:01 It’s very obviously important.
0:42:03 It’s in the public interest.
0:42:05 How is this a question you have?
0:42:06 I was like, yeah, me too, but it’s a thing I really, I’m really like, what is in a deeper
0:42:13 way the point of this?
0:42:14 And one of the answers I sometimes audition for myself is every one of us is going to
0:42:18 die before we die.
0:42:20 We’re going to survive some things.
0:42:22 And one of the things stories can be our instruction maps, and they’re not perfect,
0:42:26 but it’s sort of like, here’s how I got out of that place with my soul intact.
0:42:31 One of the things we do sometimes that I love when we get to do is talk to somebody who
0:42:36 just navigated something psychologically complex and learned a couple of things about it.
0:42:42 But in a way where you really do feel, it’s not like drink water and exercise and be good
0:42:47 to your spouse, but more like, no, no, no, here’s how I got out of that.
0:42:51 I really figured something out, let me tell you the trick.
0:42:56 That again was PJ vote host of the search engine podcast.
0:43:00 I hope you like hearing a new show in our feed once in a while.
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0:43:05 Our email is radio@freakonomics.com.
0:43:08 If you’d like to hear more search engine, you can get it on any podcast app.
0:43:12 Some questions that PJ has recently asked there are, where did all the roaches go?
0:43:18 And do political yard signs actually do anything?
0:43:22 We will be back right here very soon with a regular episode of Freakonomics Radio.
0:43:27 Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too.
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0:43:42 For search engine, this episode was created by PJ vote and Shruti Pinamanani and produced
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0:43:50 Back checking this week by Claire Hyman, sound design and original composition by Armin
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0:44:27 This is like asking the FBI agent who listens on your phone calls to just like pop in and
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0:44:49 you
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0:00:00 (dramatic music)
0:00:02 When I first moved to New York City years ago,
0:00:06 I went to a lot of Broadway shows.
0:00:08 My girlfriend was an actress,
0:00:10 a lot of our friends were actors,
0:00:12 and we would scrounge tickets for cheap,
0:00:14 or more often we would second act the shows.
0:00:17 That’s when you just walk in the theater at intermission
0:00:21 and find an empty seat.
0:00:22 It’s harder to do that these days.
0:00:24 And then in my first real journalism job at New York Magazine,
0:00:29 I wrote about the theater a good bit,
0:00:31 and I was suddenly invited to become a voter
0:00:33 for the Tony Awards.
0:00:35 I thought this was an honor of some kind.
0:00:37 It turned out to be more of a punishment
0:00:40 because a Tony voter is supposed to see every show
0:00:44 that’s nominated for any category,
0:00:46 which means you see a lot of theater
0:00:48 that just isn’t very good.
0:00:51 I don’t mean to be cruel.
0:00:53 I know that everyone involved works really hard,
0:00:56 but making a great piece of theater,
0:00:59 great piece of anything, takes more than hard work.
0:01:02 It takes talent and luck and endurance,
0:01:07 and something that feels like alchemy.
0:01:10 Anyway, after seeing 20 or 30 Broadway shows a year,
0:01:15 many of them mediocre at best,
0:01:18 I pretty much gave up on it.
0:01:20 I also stopped following the business side of theater,
0:01:23 which I had found fascinating and weird.
0:01:27 But I moved on.
0:01:28 It just felt like in a world
0:01:30 of rapidly expanding entertainment options,
0:01:33 Broadway had been left behind.
0:01:35 Meanwhile, the tickets kept getting more expensive.
0:01:39 These days, the average Broadway ticket costs over $125.
0:01:43 The average household income
0:01:44 of a Broadway ticket buyer today is over $270,000.
0:01:49 This steep inflation was actually predicted
0:01:52 back in 1965 by a pair of economists,
0:01:56 William Baumol and William Bowen.
0:01:58 They published a paper called On the Performing Arts,
0:02:01 The Anatomy of Their Economic Problems.
0:02:05 Even back then, they saw that when an industry
0:02:08 is not able to use new technologies to raise productivity,
0:02:12 which is what most industries do,
0:02:15 then prices would spike
0:02:16 since the cost of labor continues to rise.
0:02:19 This phenomenon came to be called Baumol’s cost disease.
0:02:23 Today, it helps explain why sectors like healthcare
0:02:27 and education have also seen massive inflation.
0:02:31 There may be a lot of new technology in those fields,
0:02:33 but it doesn’t change the basic fact
0:02:35 that they require a lot of real people
0:02:38 spending a lot of time doing or making a thing,
0:02:42 and real people are expensive.
0:02:46 Can you think of an industry more vulnerable
0:02:48 to this cost disease than live theater?
0:02:52 For starters, you can’t scale it.
0:02:55 It takes dozens of people, sometimes hundreds,
0:02:58 working very hard for many hours every day
0:03:01 so that you and I can plop ourselves in a seat
0:03:04 and watch something that is essentially handmade,
0:03:07 and that’s not counting the thousands of hours
0:03:10 and dollars spent creating the show in the first place.
0:03:13 Writers, directors, producers, musicians,
0:03:16 lighting and costume and scenic designers,
0:03:19 then there are the staged readings and workshops,
0:03:22 rehearsals, sometimes fistfights.
0:03:25 But if all the elements line up,
0:03:28 the talent, the luck, the endurance, the alchemy,
0:03:32 it can also be something spectacular
0:03:35 and unique every single time.
0:03:37 A while back, we got an email from a listener.
0:03:41 We had just put out a series on the airline industry,
0:03:44 and this listener suggested something similar
0:03:46 on the theater industry.
0:03:48 So we started looking into it.
0:03:50 We did a bunch of interviews,
0:03:51 feeling around for a center of gravity, a hypothesis.
0:03:56 One obvious working title came to mind.
0:03:59 Is theater dead?
0:04:01 Or maybe this time is theater really dead?
0:04:05 Because the demise of theater has been predicted
0:04:07 for decades, if not longer.
0:04:10 It is, after all, one of our oldest art forms,
0:04:13 going back to at least the ancient Greeks.
0:04:15 It’s more than 2,500 years ago.
0:04:18 And who says everything has to last forever?
0:04:21 Maybe live theater had just outlived its time.
0:04:25 During those early interviews we did,
0:04:27 it became clear that the economics of theater
0:04:30 are still fascinating and weird.
0:04:33 For those of us in New York,
0:04:35 Broadway is just the visible tip of the iceberg.
0:04:39 Beneath it are many hundreds of professional,
0:04:42 not-for-profit theaters,
0:04:44 regionals and repertoires and university programs
0:04:47 and others, and their economics have become dire.
0:04:51 Even before the COVID shutdown, which hit them hard,
0:04:55 a lot of the nonprofits were in financial trouble.
0:04:58 Part of the problem is that they’ve always relied
0:05:00 on philanthropic donations,
0:05:01 and most younger donors just aren’t that interested
0:05:04 in the theater.
0:05:06 But this is a big problem for the commercial theater too,
0:05:08 for Broadway, because the nonprofits are the farm system
0:05:12 for Broadway shows.
0:05:14 Of the 26 new plays or musicals
0:05:17 that opened on Broadway this season,
0:05:19 23 of them came up through the farm system,
0:05:22 most in the U.S. and a few in the U.K.
0:05:25 As we were trying to figure out
0:05:27 how to make a radio series about all this,
0:05:30 I started going to see shows again, quite a few,
0:05:34 in New York and London and a couple other places.
0:05:38 I am sorry to report that once again,
0:05:40 most of them weren’t great.
0:05:42 I’d still get excited every time the lights went down
0:05:46 and you’d feel your heart beating faster.
0:05:49 What am I about to see?
0:05:51 Where will it take me?
0:05:52 Because there is a thing that can only happen in theater,
0:05:56 and I kept looking for it for something
0:05:58 that didn’t feel like it was trying to be a concert
0:06:01 or a sitcom or a theme park ride.
0:06:04 I went to see a musical version of Back to the Future.
0:06:07 The highlight was, toward the end,
0:06:09 the DeLorean flying out over the audience.
0:06:13 I didn’t actually see this happen
0:06:14 because I left at intermission,
0:06:16 but maybe someone else second acted the show
0:06:19 and got to see it from my seat.
0:06:21 I hope so.
0:06:22 I recognize everyone has their own taste.
0:06:24 I’m not trying to yuck anyone else’s yum.
0:06:27 I was just looking for something
0:06:29 that could only happen in a dark room
0:06:31 with real people on stage doing and saying things
0:06:36 that you won’t see or hear anywhere else,
0:06:38 or at least not as intensely and intelligently.
0:06:42 I guess I was looking for a jolt.
0:06:45 And finally, I found it.
0:06:48 And the person responsible for creating it
0:06:51 feels the way I do.
0:06:53 – I wanna feel electricity
0:06:55 and I wanna feel alive in a new way.
0:06:57 I wanna feel something unpeeling or unfolding
0:07:01 in a very surprising way when I go to the theater.
0:07:04 – His name is David Ajmi.
0:07:05 He’s been writing plays for many years.
0:07:08 This one, it’s called Stereophonic.
0:07:11 It took 11 years.
0:07:12 Stereophonic is about a rock band
0:07:14 in the 1970s recording an album.
0:07:17 It’s a show about music, but it’s not a musical.
0:07:20 It’s got the feel of a documentary,
0:07:22 but it’s more intimate and more interesting.
0:07:26 It might not seem theatrical, but it is.
0:07:29 It’s just not performative
0:07:31 in the way that so much theater is these days.
0:07:34 Anyway, I loved it.
0:07:36 And I wanted to tell you about it.
0:07:38 And I wanted to hear from the people who made it.
0:07:41 So we are still working on that series
0:07:44 about the economics of the theater industry.
0:07:46 That’ll come out later this year, I hope.
0:07:48 But Stereophonic is having a moment right now.
0:07:52 It is nominated for more Tony Awards
0:07:54 in any play in history.
0:07:56 It’s the show that rock stars are going to see
0:07:58 on their nights off.
0:08:00 So today on Freakonomics Radio,
0:08:02 the first of a two-part series, trust me, it’s worth it,
0:08:06 to find out how the alchemy happened.
0:08:09 We will hear from the creators.
0:08:11 – We’ve been told throughout this show
0:08:13 to have a bit of hostility to the audience.
0:08:15 – It’s not a very fashionable play.
0:08:17 It doesn’t have to do with identity politics.
0:08:19 – It’s about nothing and it’s about everything.
0:08:22 It’s about being in a room with creative people,
0:08:26 making something or at least trying to make something great.
0:08:29 – And we’ll hear from the producers.
0:08:32 – If you follow a formula for Broadway,
0:08:34 what I’ve found is the biggest successes on Broadway
0:08:37 tend to break that formula, and this is one of those.
0:08:41 – How to break a formula, break some hearts,
0:08:45 and in this case, break the bank.
0:08:48 The unlikely success of Stereophonic
0:08:51 and what it may say about the future of live theater,
0:08:54 starting now.
0:08:55 (upbeat music)
0:08:59 (clock ticking)
0:09:02 – This is Freakonomics Radio,
0:09:08 the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything
0:09:11 with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:09:14 (audience cheering)
0:09:17 – Going to see a piece of live theater
0:09:25 takes time, effort, and money.
0:09:27 Sometimes a lot of money.
0:09:29 You could watch thousands of movies on Netflix
0:09:32 for the cost of one Broadway ticket.
0:09:35 So what does theater have going for it?
0:09:38 What does it still do that nothing else can?
0:09:41 Here again is the playwright, David Ajmi.
0:09:44 – It is live and the audience becomes an organism
0:09:49 and they are in collaboration with the actors.
0:09:52 So there’s something about that kind of liturgy,
0:09:55 the ritual of being in a space together,
0:09:58 creating a new thing every single night
0:10:00 because it is totally different every single night
0:10:03 and the energy and the electricity,
0:10:05 what makes something funny or moving one night
0:10:08 can be completely discrepant with what happens the next night.
0:10:12 That kind of knife edged liveness
0:10:15 is something that you only can really get in the theater
0:10:18 and it’s a temporal art form.
0:10:20 It takes place within a compressed amount of time.
0:10:23 There’s a beginning, middle, and end that you can feel
0:10:25 when I was writing my memoir,
0:10:27 I couldn’t get a sense of the shape because it was so big.
0:10:30 There were so many hundreds of pages that I was like,
0:10:32 oh my God, I can’t even get a sense of what this shape is.
0:10:35 In a play, it’s much more skeletal.
0:10:37 You can feel the shape of it.
0:10:39 You can trace the vertebrae of it when you’re writing it.
0:10:42 It’s much easier to wrap your head around it.
0:10:44 – Ajmi grew up in a fairly strange, often dysfunctional,
0:10:49 always loud family of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn.
0:10:53 In his memoir, Lot 6, published in 2020,
0:10:57 he writes about seeing Sweeney Todd
0:10:59 when he was eight years old.
0:11:00 Sweeney Todd is a musical by Stephen Sondheim
0:11:03 about a barber in Victorian England
0:11:05 who, having suffered a great injustice,
0:11:08 gets revenge by slaughtering people in his barber shop
0:11:13 and with the help of his confederate, Mrs. Lovett,
0:11:16 turning them into meat pies.
0:11:19 – That play was about a real outsider, a cultural outsider,
0:11:23 and it was my first time seeing something
0:11:24 where an outsider, an anti-hero,
0:11:27 was presented at the center of something.
0:11:30 The violence of his emotions and the injustice of the world
0:11:33 was being propounded in these crazy songs
0:11:36 and in this wild comedy,
0:11:37 and it was all kind of cross-hatched together.
0:11:40 That was very thrilling for me,
0:11:42 and it was showing me something about my psyche
0:11:44 that I didn’t have the language for,
0:11:46 ’cause I was too young to know how to speak about my life,
0:11:49 but he became like an avatar for me.
0:11:51 He scared me, and he scared me because he was in me already.
0:11:55 – You mean Sweeney, not Sondheim.
0:11:56 – Sweeney, and probably Sondheim,
0:11:59 ’cause I think Sweeney is a part of Sondheim.
0:12:01 I think all artists have that part to them,
0:12:03 the exile, the outsider, the person who doesn’t fit in
0:12:06 that nobody understands and needs to be seen
0:12:08 and needs to get revenge and needs all these things.
0:12:10 So I was very taken by that show,
0:12:13 but I couldn’t understand it, and I have a language for it,
0:12:15 and it was almost like I was knocked upside my head,
0:12:18 and I like theater that creates that experience
0:12:21 for the audience.
0:12:22 – Sweeney Todd was recently revived on Broadway
0:12:27 with Josh Groban playing Sweeney for a time
0:12:30 beside the endlessly entertaining Annaly Ashford
0:12:33 as Mrs. Love It.
0:12:35 And there’s another Sondheim revival on Broadway right now,
0:12:38 merrily we roll along,
0:12:39 which, like David Ajmi’s Stereophonic,
0:12:42 may win some Tony Awards.
0:12:45 But Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021,
0:12:48 is more of a theater person’s theater person.
0:12:51 He did win many awards, and some of his shows,
0:12:55 like Company and Into the Woods,
0:12:57 did have long Broadway runs,
0:12:59 but you have to go back to West Side Story and Gypsy
0:13:03 to find a time when Sondheim was considered mainstream.
0:13:06 When you look at the shows that make it to Broadway today,
0:13:09 especially the musicals,
0:13:11 most of them are targeted at tourists
0:13:13 who want a fun and familiar piece of entertainment.
0:13:17 Not that there’s anything wrong with that,
0:13:19 but people like Sondheim and now David Ajmi
0:13:23 have always offered something different,
0:13:25 something more original, more off-kilter
0:13:30 than the blander entertainments in the Hollywood adaptations.
0:13:34 But why isn’t there more of that?
0:13:37 – There’s no funding for it,
0:13:38 and people are discouraged to do it
0:13:40 because they wanna be produced,
0:13:41 so they think they have to make their work producible,
0:13:43 so they’re chasing trends,
0:13:44 and the artistic directors are trying to appease their boards,
0:13:47 and they’re trying to bring subscribers in,
0:13:49 and everyone wants something a little middle-brow
0:13:52 ’cause it’s easier to digest.
0:13:54 – What Ajmi is talking about here
0:13:55 are the nonprofit theaters that feed Broadway.
0:13:58 The theater is in places like Seattle and Chicago,
0:14:01 La Jolla and Hartford.
0:14:03 – A writer really has to risk being a splinter.
0:14:07 Someone who comes in and disrupts,
0:14:09 and you are not going to make money doing that, probably.
0:14:12 – Well, you might.
0:14:13 – Now I can.
0:14:14 – But like, this is lightning striking.
0:14:16 This is a rare occurrence.
0:14:18 – It is, and this play,
0:14:19 I didn’t try to do this to be commercial or anything like that.
0:14:22 I made it the same way I make everything else,
0:14:24 but it has music in it,
0:14:25 and I’m working with a brilliant composer
0:14:27 and people like music,
0:14:28 so it kind of abuts being a Broadway musical,
0:14:31 even though it has nothing to do with that.
0:14:32 – The brilliant composer he’s talking about
0:14:34 is Will Butler from Arcade Fire,
0:14:37 the Canadian band who’ve made some very good records
0:14:39 over the past couple of decades.
0:14:41 His brother, Win Butler, is the frontman.
0:14:43 He was recently accused of sexual misconduct
0:14:46 and bullying.
0:14:48 By then, Will Butler had already quit the band.
0:14:51 Some of the music he wrote for Stereophonic
0:14:54 sounds like Arcade Fire.
0:14:56 It is dark and bright at the same time somehow.
0:15:00 It is traditional in some key ways, but also modernist.
0:15:05 But the band that Stereophonic really reminds you of
0:15:08 is Fleetwood Mac.
0:15:10 The demographics are identical.
0:15:12 There is a British husband and wife
0:15:14 who were in the midst of breaking up
0:15:16 as were Christine and John McVeigh
0:15:18 when Fleetwood Mac recorded their blockbuster record rumors.
0:15:21 There is an American couple,
0:15:23 very much like Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks,
0:15:26 who are also in the middle of breaking up.
0:15:28 Their names are Peter and Diana in the play.
0:15:32 If you’re looking for further Fleetwood Mac parallels,
0:15:34 both Lindsay Buckingham and the Peter character
0:15:37 happen to have a brother who swims in the Olympics.
0:15:41 And the fifth member of the Stereophonic band
0:15:44 is a drummer who is also British, as was Mick Fleetwood.
0:15:48 The entire play, more than three hours long,
0:15:51 happens inside a recording studio.
0:15:53 The band is making their second record.
0:15:55 They’re first at a slow start, but now it is caught fire
0:15:59 and they are turning into big rock stars.
0:16:02 Although that’s all happening outside the studio.
0:16:04 We feel it, but we never see it.
0:16:07 We also feel the sudden pressure of huge expectations.
0:16:12 There are also two recording engineers in the play.
0:16:15 So seven people hermetically sealed on this stage
0:16:20 of fishbowl of ambition and talent
0:16:24 and exhaustion and frustration.
0:16:26 It is both thrilling and painful
0:16:29 to so thoroughly eavesdrop on them.
0:16:32 David Ajmi is in his early fifties
0:16:35 and he had written several plays before this one,
0:16:37 but Stereophonic will end up being more commercially successful
0:16:40 than the rest of them put together, maybe times 10.
0:16:44 I asked him where the inspiration
0:16:46 for Stereophonic came from.
0:16:49 He said it was from listening
0:16:50 to a Led Zeppelin recording one day.
0:16:53 – I was on a plane ride and I was going to a conference,
0:16:56 a theater conference and I was listening to In-Flight Radio
0:16:59 and that song, “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,”
0:17:01 which is the cover they did, came on.
0:17:04 – That song was written in the 1950s
0:17:06 by the folk singer Ann Burdon.
0:17:08 It was first recorded by Joan Baez
0:17:10 before Led Zeppelin covered it.
0:17:12 – My brother, when I was a really little kid,
0:17:14 my brother’s much older than me.
0:17:16 He used to play that over and over on his guitar
0:17:18 when he was teaching himself how to play guitar.
0:17:20 So I knew that song just from those chords,
0:17:24 but then I started listening to the vocals
0:17:27 and it’s just so crazy and so volatile
0:17:30 and so emotionally intense.
0:17:33 ♪ I’ve got the power ♪
0:17:36 There’s something about it was just so transfixing to me.
0:17:39 ♪ I’ve got the power ♪
0:17:41 – And I just imagined the studio.
0:17:43 I was trying to visualize it
0:17:44 ’cause you’re trapped on a plane, what are you gonna do?
0:17:47 It activates the imagination and then I sort of went,
0:17:49 “Oh, wait a minute, what if that’s the set for a play?”
0:17:53 And I just immediately knew
0:17:54 that I was gonna write this play and I thought,
0:17:56 “But how am I gonna write this play?
0:17:58 “It’s not so interesting.
0:17:59 “They’re just gonna record an album, what is it?”
0:18:02 And so I just sort of let myself not know
0:18:04 for a really long time how I was gonna do it,
0:18:07 but I just knew sometimes you just kind of know.
0:18:09 – I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody
0:18:12 have the genesis of a great piece of art
0:18:14 come from in-flight radio.
0:18:16 – Welcome to me.
0:18:19 – From that day until today is about how many years?
0:18:23 – That was 11 years ago.
0:18:24 – Were you working on it during that time
0:18:27 or did you just let it germinate for a while in your mind?
0:18:30 – I let it germinate for a while.
0:18:31 I was doing other things.
0:18:32 I was supposed to write my book.
0:18:33 I was late with my book and I had another project
0:18:35 that I was commissioned to do.
0:18:36 And so I was doing this like on the side.
0:18:39 And the way that I decided to make it was,
0:18:41 I just decided to invite a director to come on
0:18:45 and invite my composer and invite the music director
0:18:48 and invite a team.
0:18:50 Before I had a word on page, I just said,
0:18:52 “Would you guys all just commit to doing this with me?”
0:18:55 It became almost like this weird totemic force,
0:18:58 this kind of weird–
0:19:00 – Well, you formed a band.
0:19:02 – I formed a band and we are a band.
0:19:04 It feels like it.
0:19:05 – Had you been in a band before?
0:19:07 – Never ever.
0:19:09 I knew I wanted to work with Arcade Fire
0:19:10 from the first time I heard the funeral album.
0:19:13 And then when I thought about this project
0:19:14 and just the feeling of the music that I wanted,
0:19:17 I just thought of them.
0:19:18 So I had a friend who knew the creative director
0:19:21 of Arcade Fire, so we reached out to Arcade Fire
0:19:23 and Will was the only one who came back
0:19:25 and said, “I’ll meet with you.”
0:19:26 – Where was he living then?
0:19:27 – He was living in Montreal right before that,
0:19:29 but he’d just moved to New York.
0:19:30 So it was kind of perfect timing.
0:19:32 We met and we talked about like Herman Melville
0:19:35 and Moby Dick for a really long time.
0:19:37 Will’s a polymath and so he’s not a normal rocker.
0:19:40 He’s really smart, really smart.
0:19:42 He knows about everything.
0:19:44 And so I just was like, “This guy’s cool
0:19:46 and he’s a unicorn.”
0:19:47 I could tell right away he’s adaptable.
0:19:50 He can do different kinds of things.
0:19:51 And I said, “This isn’t gonna be the kind of thing
0:19:54 where you come in with a song and then we put the song on.
0:19:56 Like we have to go through iterations.
0:19:57 It has to be right for this play.
0:19:59 It has to fit exactly into what I’m doing.
0:20:01 Are you open to that?”
0:20:02 And he said, “Absolutely.”
0:20:03 He was super cool about it.
0:20:05 And so he agreed to do it in 2014.
0:20:07 And then I don’t think it was until 2018
0:20:10 that I had a draft that I could show him.
0:20:13 And we read it together.
0:20:15 Will played some parts.
0:20:16 I played parts Daniel and my music director.
0:20:19 Yeah, my director and the music director.
0:20:21 We all kind of read it together a couple of times.
0:20:23 And then he went home and he read it.
0:20:25 And then he like built out songs in character.
0:20:28 – Did he build out many of the songs
0:20:30 right in that first round of writing
0:20:31 or did it come slowly?
0:20:33 – No, he had a couple and then a few that we didn’t use.
0:20:37 And it went on like that for a while.
0:20:39 Like Masquerade didn’t have a bridge.
0:20:40 And I was like, “Dude, that song needs a bridge.
0:20:43 Can we do this and that?”
0:20:44 I’d say I want it to be a little more heterogeneous.
0:20:46 I don’t want it to just have one feeling to it.
0:20:49 I want it to switch and turn more.
0:20:50 And I would like dramaturg the songs.
0:20:52 He let me do it ’cause he was cool like that.
0:20:55 And when he didn’t want to,
0:20:56 he wouldn’t and say, “Okay, I’ll shut up.”
0:20:59 ♪ I might take you to the Masquerade ♪
0:21:03 ♪ Soul is sold on the money paid ♪
0:21:06 – I was researching this play by, I mean, I read books,
0:21:09 but I also watched a ton of documentaries.
0:21:11 – What were some of the docs
0:21:12 and what were some of the bands that you watched and liked?
0:21:15 – So many.
0:21:16 – I mean, I’m guessing there was a Fleetwood Mac doc.
0:21:18 – There were definitely Fleetwood Mac docs.
0:21:20 They have one, I think it’s from when they were making Tusk
0:21:22 that has a lot of great, very private feeling stuff in it.
0:21:26 The Metallica documentary, some kind of monster.
0:21:30 There was something about this documentary style
0:21:32 and feeling that I myself was watching eavesdropping
0:21:36 on these people in this very private recording process
0:21:38 because nobody gets led into these studios.
0:21:41 So the fact that I was watching them
0:21:43 and hearing these Soto Votre conversations
0:21:46 and seeing these private moments.
0:21:48 – Yeah, but here’s what I like about your show more
0:21:51 than those docs, which I also like,
0:21:53 but when you are a musician in a studio
0:21:55 and there’s a camera, you know, it’s there.
0:21:58 You may act as if it’s not
0:21:59 and you might forget about it once in a while,
0:22:01 but generally you will behave in a way that burnishes
0:22:05 in your mind your reputation at that moment
0:22:08 because you understand you’re being observed.
0:22:11 So it might look like real life, but it’s not really.
0:22:14 Whereas in your fictional version,
0:22:17 it feels more like nonfiction
0:22:19 because you don’t have those constraints.
0:22:21 It feels like we’re eavesdropping for real.
0:22:24 Well, thank you for saying that.
0:22:25 That’s a real compliment to us.
0:22:27 Whether it’s an illusion or not,
0:22:29 that was what was so seductive to me
0:22:30 about those documentaries.
0:22:32 And so when I was composing the play
0:22:36 and I wanted to use a different style
0:22:38 and realism for me as a style,
0:22:40 I started to sort of borrow from that.
0:22:42 And that’s why there’s so much overlapping dialogue
0:22:44 in that first scene.
0:22:44 I really wanted people to understand like,
0:22:47 no, you’re not gonna get it all.
0:22:48 This is not for you.
0:22:50 You have to lean in from the beginning
0:22:52 and know you’re gonna miss stuff
0:22:53 because you’re eavesdropping.
0:22:55 So that creates the kind of lattice work
0:22:58 through which you peek in and watch the play
0:23:00 from the very first scene.
0:23:01 That was very deliberately constructed.
0:23:03 – Can you check to see if the mic pre is on?
0:23:07 – My head is like a brick.
0:23:09 – It’s on?
0:23:10 – Grab some aspirin.
0:23:11 – You don’t need an aspirin.
0:23:11 I need to get like one hour of sleep.
0:23:13 This is insane.
0:23:14 Did you sleep through that?
0:23:15 – Look at my eyes.
0:23:17 – Oh, their blood shot.
0:23:21 – So I used to play music and record music.
0:23:23 And of many things I love about your play,
0:23:25 one is simply how well the playing of music is rendered.
0:23:29 It just feels real and thrilling and painful
0:23:33 and all those things you feel when you’re in a band.
0:23:36 But I also loved how well you rendered the recording process,
0:23:39 which is a totally different animal.
0:23:41 So can you talk about how you got to that?
0:23:44 – So much of it was me faking stuff early on.
0:23:47 I would look at things in documentaries
0:23:49 and they’d say these phrases and I go,
0:23:50 “Ooh, that sounds cool.”
0:23:51 And I’d write it down.
0:23:52 Just every time a phrase sounded like something cool
0:23:55 that I would believe sounded like a real production thing,
0:23:58 I would write it down.
0:23:59 – Like your snare is rattling a little bit.
0:24:00 – Well, yeah, and that I got,
0:24:02 I knew I wanted to be a problem with the drum.
0:24:05 And I didn’t know what kind of problem
0:24:07 would happen with the drum.
0:24:08 So I said to my sound guy, Brian Rumory, who’s brilliant,
0:24:12 what kind of problem would happen
0:24:13 that would cause this drummer to melt down?
0:24:16 And what would he do to fix it?
0:24:17 And then how could that go wrong?
0:24:19 I wanted to construct a scene where he goes down a black hole
0:24:22 as so Ryan really talked me through it for about an hour.
0:24:25 That’s how I did that scene.
0:24:26 – Now the snares are ringing again.
0:24:31 – I didn’t hear it that time.
0:24:33 Did you hear it?
0:24:33 – No.
0:24:34 – I didn’t hear it that time.
0:24:35 – I wanted to fix it and it keeps making everything worse.
0:24:38 You know, I wish we hadn’t touched it.
0:24:39 I really do.
0:24:40 I really do.
0:24:41 I wish we just left it alone.
0:24:42 – Sorry, man.
0:24:43 – A drum is a piece of wood.
0:24:48 It’s ephemeral.
0:24:49 You can’t keep changing things.
0:24:51 Now we’ve changed everything and I can’t change it back.
0:24:53 – Stereophonic is about a band.
0:24:58 And it’s about a band early on in its career
0:25:01 that’s finding fame.
0:25:02 They all happen to love each other
0:25:05 and have relationships with one another.
0:25:07 I’m Sonia Friedman and I’m a theater producer.
0:25:11 – Friedman, based in London, is one of the most prolific
0:25:14 theatrical producers in recent history.
0:25:16 At the moment, she has more than a dozen shows
0:25:19 in production on the West End in London,
0:25:21 as well as on Broadway and in several other countries.
0:25:24 Her shows have won more than 60 Olivier Awards in Britain
0:25:28 and as of this recording, 39 Tony Awards.
0:25:32 I asked Friedman why she’d been attracted to Stereophonic.
0:25:36 – We watched them through the course of the making of
0:25:40 an album which will end up being a great album
0:25:44 for the ages, but they don’t know that at the time.
0:25:47 Watch them battle through creativity,
0:25:50 trying to find their own individual voices,
0:25:52 but also be as one and crash through their relationships
0:25:58 and see them just battling through.
0:26:01 And the thing is that what David the author and Daniel,
0:26:04 the director have done is they’ve been incredibly bold
0:26:07 with this show because there’s this rule in New York.
0:26:12 You know, there’s this rule in New York.
0:26:13 You can’t have shows running over a particular length of time
0:26:17 and you know, it’s got to have stars in it.
0:26:20 If you follow a formula for Broadway,
0:26:23 actually what I’ve found is the biggest successes
0:26:25 on Broadway tend to break that formula.
0:26:28 And this is one of those.
0:26:29 It has to run at three hours plus because you have to get
0:26:34 this sense of this album taking forever to make.
0:26:39 And you never, ever, ever feel the length.
0:26:41 You want to be with this group forever.
0:26:43 And of course, the music is sublime
0:26:47 and they’re really brilliant with the way they tease the music.
0:26:50 They don’t give it to you easily.
0:26:52 You have to wait, you have to wait.
0:26:54 But there’s this moment of absolute ecstasy
0:26:57 when, you know, 45, 50 minutes in, you hear it and you go,
0:27:00 “Oh God, that’s what they’re making.”
0:27:02 Oh wow.
0:27:04 ♪ Never wakes you in the morning ♪
0:27:10 ♪ Whatever keeps you up at night ♪
0:27:14 And it sort of begins to make sense as to why this group
0:27:18 who seem at each other’s throats,
0:27:20 and then they get in the room together and they make magic.
0:27:24 And that’s art. That’s art.
0:27:25 The band in Stereophonic is never named.
0:27:32 The actors do have a pet name for the band,
0:27:34 but I promised not to tell.
0:27:36 They are led by Peter, who writes, sings, plays guitar,
0:27:40 and winds up imposing his will on everyone else.
0:27:44 We hear about Peter before we see him.
0:27:46 Here are Simon, the drummer, and Diana, who writes and sings.
0:27:51 She’s also Peter’s girlfriend.
0:27:53 – The last album took three weeks.
0:27:55 So this can’t take more than another two, three weeks tops.
0:27:57 We can make it two more weeks.
0:27:59 – Peter said last night he was ready to snap,
0:28:01 and he wanted to confront Reg and I said, “No,
0:28:03 don’t escalate things.”
0:28:04 – It was good you did that.
0:28:05 – “And now you have to do your part.”
0:28:07 – All of the characters are interesting
0:28:11 and at least occasionally charming,
0:28:13 except for Peter, who doesn’t do charm.
0:28:17 – He’s got a very, very difficult role,
0:28:20 because how I see him, that’s maybe because I’m a producer,
0:28:24 I see him trying desperately to wrestle this group
0:28:29 and keep this group together, and he has a vision,
0:28:33 and maybe he’s got such a strong vision
0:28:37 that he’s not seeing what’s going on around him.
0:28:39 – Peter is one of the lead vocalists in the band.
0:28:43 He’s the lead guitarist of the band
0:28:46 and becomes the producer of the album as the show goes on.
0:28:50 I’m Tom Fasinka and I’m an actor.
0:28:54 – How would you describe the Peter character emotionally?
0:28:58 – He’s a control freak, but there’s reasons why.
0:29:02 He’s a guy that is a survivor in a lot of aspects.
0:29:06 I won’t go into all the backstory of his father
0:29:09 and all that stuff, ’cause I think that’s sort of for me.
0:29:12 – Some of it’s in the writing.
0:29:13 – Some of it’s in the writing,
0:29:14 but I think the emotional landscape is for me.
0:29:18 I think he’s been taught a certain amount of savagery.
0:29:22 He’s had to develop a work ethic that can be harmful
0:29:27 to himself and to others, but can also produce great results.
0:29:31 – What does it feel like to play this character?
0:29:33 Forget about the endurance requirements of a three hour show.
0:29:37 I mean, you’re on stage, everyone’s on stage a lot,
0:29:40 but what’s the experience feel like?
0:29:43 – This show has been an incredible experience
0:29:47 and a challenging one in the fact
0:29:49 that my character is not the most palatable person in the room.
0:29:53 So, you know, I’ve been heckled.
0:29:56 There’s loud groans of disapproval.
0:29:59 I always used to say that,
0:30:01 oh, I’m an actor who doesn’t care if he’s liked or not.
0:30:03 That’s not what an artist cares about.
0:30:06 But I think deep down, as human beings,
0:30:08 we all care if we’re liked even a little bit.
0:30:11 So I think the universe brought this play into my life
0:30:14 to sort of be like, yeah, prove it.
0:30:16 – What’s a line in Stereophonic that you know
0:30:20 that every night you say it,
0:30:21 you’re going to become the objective scorn?
0:30:25 – No, she asks me, can I speak with you privately?
0:30:29 Can I say no?
0:30:31 And before that, I say,
0:30:33 then don’t get in your own head, be a professional.
0:30:36 So those are two guaranteed groans from the audience.
0:30:41 – I think you romanticize who you are a little bit.
0:30:45 You’re looking out for yourself just as much as I do.
0:30:48 You’re very ambitious.
0:30:49 – I am not ambitious.
0:30:51 Don’t sling mud at me.
0:30:52 – You want to use me to arrange a song,
0:30:53 but then when I’m telling you it’s too long
0:30:55 or to cut something, you have no interest.
0:30:56 And then you take it as criticism.
0:30:58 Then don’t ask me to arrange a song.
0:30:59 – Because you can be very aggressive, Peter.
0:31:01 – How am I?
0:31:01 – I don’t like to be forced.
0:31:02 Okay?
0:31:03 He says some pretty out of pocket stuff.
0:31:07 I’m Sarah Pigeon, I’m an actor
0:31:11 and I’m currently in Stereophonic playing Diana.
0:31:14 He also says, if I don’t force you to have a baby,
0:31:18 then it’s never going to happen.
0:31:19 It’s like, oh, you don’t say that.
0:31:22 – Is it hard for you as a female actor in 2024
0:31:25 to get into that mode in 1976 and 1977
0:31:29 where those things were said by a man
0:31:32 and not respond the way you might want to respond in 2024?
0:31:35 – Yeah, I think that was one of the more difficult hurdles
0:31:39 that I had to get over.
0:31:40 I was judging Diana a lot at the beginning
0:31:43 for staying in this relationship.
0:31:45 And I was bringing my 2024 self to it.
0:31:49 Like a guy just should not talk to you that way.
0:31:51 And how have you stayed in it for this long?
0:31:53 But she doesn’t know what feminism is.
0:31:55 She doesn’t know who Gloria Steinem is.
0:31:57 She knows she has these feelings.
0:32:00 It’s a time in I think rock history
0:32:02 where there’s no one to look to for direction and guidance.
0:32:06 I don’t think that there’s this feeling
0:32:07 that she can go off on her own.
0:32:09 I don’t even think it crosses her mind
0:32:10 until she’s offered a solo album.
0:32:12 I think her understanding of her artistry
0:32:15 and songwriting is so tied to Peter’s orchestration of it
0:32:20 and his editing and his advice.
0:32:23 – Here is David Ajmi again,
0:32:25 talking about the Peter character.
0:32:27 – That character is very similar to me in a lot of ways.
0:32:30 He’s very damaged and that’s a lot of my damage.
0:32:34 It’s all kind of this weird cross-hatching,
0:32:36 but in the end it’s a self portrait.
0:32:38 And I think all great art has to be that.
0:32:39 You have to put skin in the game.
0:32:40 You can’t just write about those people over there.
0:32:44 They have to be inside of you in some way for it to really work.
0:32:47 – What I love about Peter,
0:32:48 even though he’s sort of odious sometimes,
0:32:51 is that he sets the bar really high
0:32:54 and that pisses everyone off,
0:32:56 but they’re also grateful for it in the end.
0:32:59 How much of that is you?
0:33:01 – That’s me, it’s all me.
0:33:02 – Remind me not to collaborate with you.
0:33:05 – I just maintain and I’ve said it over and over
0:33:07 to the cast ’cause I’m a big staunch defender of Peter,
0:33:10 even though I know he’s got a lot of problems.
0:33:13 Peter’s biggest flaw is that he has no bedside manner.
0:33:15 He doesn’t understand how to be politic
0:33:18 about offering his criticism and he has bad timing.
0:33:21 If he just could be more gracious and more kind of tricky
0:33:24 about how to deliver these criticisms
0:33:26 and he could lie better, but he’s not a liar.
0:33:29 He’s really, really blunt.
0:33:31 And it’s part of an ethos that makes him great,
0:33:35 even though it’s really annoying
0:33:36 and it’s hard to work with somebody
0:33:38 who doesn’t attend in a sensitive way to your feelings.
0:33:42 When this process is so, everything is so charged
0:33:45 and heightened, you need to be sensitive to people.
0:33:48 You can’t just deliver these like sledgehammer criticisms,
0:33:52 but he’s right a lot of the time.
0:33:53 And in the play, you see how he’s right.
0:33:56 And it drives everybody crazy that he’s right,
0:33:58 but I don’t judge my characters.
0:34:00 I think Peter is sexist because he grew up
0:34:03 in a sexist culture and it was 1976.
0:34:06 I don’t think he’s a bad guy.
0:34:08 I think he’s living in a kind of weird soup of the time.
0:34:14 It was sort of a tight wire act
0:34:15 because I really don’t want people to turn against Peter.
0:34:19 They do, no matter what I do.
0:34:20 I mean, they do and they don’t like him, but I love him.
0:34:25 – Were you tempted to rewrite to make him
0:34:27 a little bit more likable at least in moments?
0:34:29 – No, Tom Pysenko who plays Peter is really adamant
0:34:33 that we stay true to the character.
0:34:36 He is a hardcore man.
0:34:37 I just love that guy because it comes from an ethical spine.
0:34:41 He’s like, my job is not to make you love him.
0:34:43 My job is to show you who this person is
0:34:47 and to show him in as much dimensionality as I can.
0:34:51 And he does that beautifully.
0:34:53 – I love that he said I have an ethical spine
0:34:57 because I think I do as an artist.
0:34:59 Like I have strong artistic values and I don’t care
0:35:04 ’cause it’s not me.
0:35:08 I don’t know if it’s like because we live in the age
0:35:10 of social media or we live in the age of reality television,
0:35:13 people just assume that, oh, well,
0:35:16 you must be like your character and it gets to you.
0:35:19 Off-Broadway, someone was like, I hated you or I hate you.
0:35:23 And I was like, you hate me?
0:35:24 That’s insane.
0:35:26 It’s not my job to make people like Peter.
0:35:28 It’s my job to make people see Peter
0:35:31 and be in the room with him, which a lot of people don’t like.
0:35:34 And maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a contrarian
0:35:38 or I’m a bit of like a, I don’t know.
0:35:40 I don’t even know what the right word is,
0:35:42 rebel or something.
0:35:43 But part of me loves it, part of me loves it
0:35:47 because it’s like you are throwing all your manners
0:35:50 out the window as an audience member to jeer at me.
0:35:54 I’m triggering something in you that’s real.
0:35:56 – We’ve been told throughout this show
0:36:00 to have a bit of hostility to the audience.
0:36:02 – By whom? Your director?
0:36:03 – Our director, yeah, Daniel Ockett.
0:36:05 There’s a lot of laughs in the show
0:36:07 and there’s moments and beats and pauses
0:36:09 and there’s a lot of musicality outside of the music
0:36:12 just in David’s writing.
0:36:13 The hostility is in the sense of not allowing
0:36:17 the audience’s reaction to throw us off
0:36:20 the rhythm and tempo that we’re exploring in the show.
0:36:23 – Coming up after the break,
0:36:27 how did that rhythm and tempo, those beats and pauses
0:36:32 turn into such a big hit?
0:36:35 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:36:36 This is Freakin’omics Radio.
0:36:37 We’ll be right back.
0:36:39 (upbeat music)
0:36:42 – David Ajmi was originally given a commission
0:36:49 to write Stereophonic by two nonprofit theater companies,
0:36:53 second stage in New York
0:36:55 and center theater group in Los Angeles.
0:36:58 – It was a co-commission from the two of them.
0:36:59 So they paid me for the commission,
0:37:01 but I mean over the course of 10 years,
0:37:03 if you divided what I got paid,
0:37:05 it’s, you know, you get more working at McDonald’s.
0:37:07 – Would you get paid for the commission?
0:37:09 – I think I got something like 30 grand.
0:37:11 – What did you do with all that money over those 10 years?
0:37:13 – I survived.
0:37:14 I mean, I paid my credit card bills.
0:37:15 This is what you have to do.
0:37:17 – It does strike me that committing to a life
0:37:19 in the theater, as you did pretty early,
0:37:22 and as many people still do,
0:37:24 is essentially a commitment to poverty and struggle as well.
0:37:29 – Oh yeah.
0:37:30 – I mean, what’s happening now with you is an anomaly
0:37:32 and it’s a great break and I’m so, so happy for you.
0:37:36 But can you just talk about,
0:37:37 not only for all the other writers,
0:37:39 but the performers and everybody else
0:37:41 that goes into making these things that, you know,
0:37:44 we just show up and sit down in the seat.
0:37:47 Can you just talk about what that kind of commitment
0:37:49 is like to a life like that?
0:37:51 – Thank you for asking that question.
0:37:53 Look, I was able to write this play
0:37:55 because I had patrons essentially.
0:37:58 There were two architects, very wonderful,
0:38:00 well-known architects living in the Hollywood Hills,
0:38:03 who had a floor of their home and I hooked up with them
0:38:05 and they let me live in that floor.
0:38:07 I lived there for about seven years,
0:38:09 gratis, and I did a little bit of TV work,
0:38:12 but basically not that much.
0:38:14 That’s how this play was written
0:38:16 because of their generosity.
0:38:17 – There are people who argue
0:38:20 that the government should just support the arts more.
0:38:23 They argue there’s a compelling rationale for that,
0:38:26 et cetera, and many other countries,
0:38:27 especially in Europe, do that.
0:38:28 What’s your position there?
0:38:29 – Yes, I absolutely agree with that.
0:38:31 I think it’s obscene that we don’t fund our artists.
0:38:34 It’s the hallmark of a civilized society.
0:38:36 Paula Vogel told me that in 1975,
0:38:39 she got a grant from the NEA,
0:38:40 which at that point funded individual artists
0:38:43 before Trent Lott and the moral majority
0:38:44 got involved in the ’90s.
0:38:46 And she got $25,000,
0:38:47 which was enough to live on for a year at that point,
0:38:50 and she was able to kickstart her career.
0:38:52 I was fortunate ’cause I ended up getting private grants.
0:38:55 Like I was at one point locked in a job
0:38:58 as a paralegal in “30 Rock,”
0:39:00 and I was working all day and I had no time to write.
0:39:03 I was like, “I’m never gonna be able to be a writer.”
0:39:06 I don’t know how to eat cattle living.
0:39:07 And I got this miraculous call
0:39:10 saying that I won a grant for $25,000 in 2003, I think it was.
0:39:14 And I thought, “Well, I can really make this last
0:39:16 if I move to Germany.”
0:39:16 So I moved to Berlin.
0:39:18 I lived in Prince Lauerberg,
0:39:19 which is a gorgeous neighborhood.
0:39:20 It’s like the West Village.
0:39:22 My rent was $200 a month.
0:39:23 That’s how I generated the beginning
0:39:26 of my body of work that made my name.
0:39:28 – Ajmi wrote plays that ran off-Broadway
0:39:33 at regional theaters, at the Royal Court Theater in London.
0:39:37 It was a relatively successful career for a playwright.
0:39:41 So what was his thinking before writing “Stereophonic”?
0:39:46 – Ironically, I was sort of planning
0:39:47 to quit plays altogether.
0:39:50 I had a very bad collaboration,
0:39:52 actually a really torturous collaboration.
0:39:56 I made no money from the production
0:39:57 and I was so beaten up.
0:39:58 I thought, “I’m not gonna do this anymore.”
0:39:59 – What was that, if you don’t mind me asking?
0:40:01 – That was a play that went sideways.
0:40:03 I’m not gonna talk about too much,
0:40:04 but it was a play about the composer, Oskar Levant.
0:40:06 So it was another play about music,
0:40:07 but a very different kind of play.
0:40:08 – And the producers were regular, standard,
0:40:11 Broadway commercial producers who liked your stuff?
0:40:13 – Yes, but they came with an actor attached.
0:40:16 We talked a little bit and I came up with this idea
0:40:19 and thought, “Oh, what about Oskar Levant?”
0:40:21 Then I said, “Okay, I’ll write this play.”
0:40:23 But you know, they had deadlines,
0:40:25 all you have to do by this time and stuff.
0:40:26 It was a little more stringent
0:40:27 because it was a commercial theater apparatus.
0:40:29 – So this was a commercial production
0:40:31 from the outset, correct?
0:40:32 – Yes.
0:40:33 – What kind of house or theater
0:40:34 would it have gone into initially if it had worked out?
0:40:37 – Broadway.
0:40:38 – Straight to Broadway?
0:40:38 – Yeah.
0:40:39 – I mean, that almost never happens, does it?
0:40:41 – When Broadway producers commission you
0:40:43 and there’s a star attached, then yeah, you can do it.
0:40:45 – I see.
0:40:46 So it was really about the star here?
0:40:48 – Yeah.
0:40:49 – Because then you’re guaranteed whatever,
0:40:50 24 weeks of box office.
0:40:52 – Exactly.
0:40:53 – Otherwise, you’re guaranteed like nothing.
0:40:55 – Yeah, exactly.
0:40:56 If there’s no star attached, you’re not gonna do this.
0:40:58 – Okay, so when that fell apart
0:41:00 and you were thinking about quitting the theater,
0:41:02 were you willing to go back to your paralegal career?
0:41:05 – No, I was gonna do TV.
0:41:07 That’s why I moved to LA.
0:41:08 And then they sucked me back in
0:41:10 ’cause I got this commission for the Broadway people
0:41:12 and then I got a grant.
0:41:14 It was a three year grant from the Mellon Foundation.
0:41:17 And they said, well, you have to write a play
0:41:19 as part of the grant.
0:41:20 And I thought, okay, well, I’ll do it,
0:41:22 but I’ll do like a one act play.
0:41:23 And I thought that’s what this play was gonna be.
0:41:25 My one act short little throw away play.
0:41:28 – And instead it’s like three hours and 15 minutes.
0:41:30 – It just grew and grew.
0:41:31 – You have no self control, do you?
0:41:33 – No, but you know, as I started researching it,
0:41:35 I realized, oh, I can never leave the theater.
0:41:37 The play became about me wanting to leave the theater
0:41:40 and knowing I couldn’t ever leave it.
0:41:42 Babe, I’m gonna leave you.
0:41:44 – So, Edgeby didn’t quit.
0:41:48 He kept grinding away on Stereophonic
0:41:50 thanks to a free place to live
0:41:52 and a commission from those two nonprofit theaters.
0:41:56 – During COVID, everything just fell apart.
0:41:58 And we went through various iterations
0:42:01 of potential commercial producers,
0:42:02 but then they all fell apart.
0:42:04 And then my agent sent it to all these
0:42:06 nonprofit theaters in New York
0:42:07 and everyone said they didn’t wanna do it.
0:42:09 – Is that because it was tainted
0:42:10 from the falling apart or no?
0:42:12 – I don’t think so.
0:42:13 You know, it’s not a very fashionable play.
0:42:15 It doesn’t have to do with identity politics.
0:42:17 It wasn’t really of the moment at all.
0:42:19 It takes place in 1976.
0:42:21 It doesn’t have a particular agenda.
0:42:23 And so I think they were like,
0:42:24 well, why would we do this?
0:42:25 And it’s expansive and who cares?
0:42:27 – And long.
0:42:28 – Yeah, and it’s long and maybe they didn’t even read it.
0:42:30 I don’t know who knows why.
0:42:32 And I knew Adam Greenfield,
0:42:34 the Artistic Director of Playwrights Horizons for decades
0:42:37 because he produced my first play in Seattle a long time ago.
0:42:41 So I said, can we go back to Adam?
0:42:42 We’d gone to him initially like a year or two before
0:42:45 and he said, no, no, I have too many plays backed up
0:42:47 because of COVID.
0:42:48 I can’t think about this.
0:42:49 But when we came back to him, he said, listen,
0:42:51 this is really expensive.
0:42:53 Tell us what you feel you need to produce this properly
0:42:57 ’cause this is gonna be a big production.
0:42:59 And my director and I said, this is how I think
0:43:01 we need to do this.
0:43:03 We’re gonna need a soundproof booth
0:43:04 and we’re gonna need a functioning recording studio
0:43:06 where we’re gonna probably need music lessons
0:43:07 for the actors and we’re gonna need more rehearsal time.
0:43:10 And he said, okay, if I can get the money, I will do it.
0:43:13 And a few months later, he called back and said,
0:43:15 okay, I have the money, let’s do it.
0:43:17 – How much was it?
0:43:17 – It definitely cost over a million.
0:43:19 – Wow, for Off-Broadway, that’s a lot.
0:43:21 – Ours is the second most expensive thing they’ve ever done.
0:43:24 And they had to sort of rejigger the season
0:43:26 to accommodate the play.
0:43:28 But that’s how much he believed in it.
0:43:31 – Here again is Tom Pesinka, who would be cast as Peter.
0:43:35 – There are many workshops
0:43:36 and some of our casts had been part of those.
0:43:39 I was not part of any of the workshops.
0:43:40 I just got a cold audition to audition
0:43:42 to play Reg and Grover.
0:43:44 – Reg is the bass player, Grover is the main engineer,
0:43:46 correct?
0:43:47 – Yes, and then I got called into the room for a callback,
0:43:51 an in-person callback for the entire team.
0:43:54 Apparently, I sucked the air out of the room.
0:43:57 This like legendary audition that I can barely remember.
0:44:00 – Meaning you brought something to Peter
0:44:03 that is similar to what Peter is now?
0:44:05 – Yes, when you’re doing it, you don’t know.
0:44:07 And I felt like it was great.
0:44:09 I definitely embraced the connections
0:44:13 between myself and Peter in a way that I don’t know
0:44:15 if I had ever done in an audition.
0:44:17 So I could feel that for sure.
0:44:20 You never know if it’s gonna make an impact
0:44:21 or you never know if like the stone cold faces behind the…
0:44:25 I mean, I do remember David Ajmi nodding furiously.
0:44:29 So I was like, okay, well, maybe that is good.
0:44:32 But other than that, no.
0:44:34 Then I got some messages from my reps being like,
0:44:37 they want you, you were the best actor in the room,
0:44:40 but you need to play guitar way better.
0:44:44 I played sort of garbage guitar
0:44:46 and I had to really up my game.
0:44:48 Then they put me in guitar lessons twice a week
0:44:50 for two months and I had to send them video updates every week.
0:44:55 And then I was down in DC with my girlfriend.
0:44:58 She was doing a show at the studio theater.
0:45:00 I thought it was done.
0:45:01 I thought, you know, they were ready to make a decision.
0:45:03 And then my manager called me and said,
0:45:05 they want one more tape.
0:45:06 And I almost jumped off the balcony in frustration.
0:45:10 And then I went to a guitar center
0:45:12 ’cause I didn’t have a guitar with me.
0:45:15 I bought a guitar.
0:45:16 I was gonna return it.
0:45:17 And then I got the part.
0:45:19 That guitar now is in my dressing room
0:45:20 with the Golden Theater.
0:45:22 I think so many actors are like frustrated rock stars.
0:45:25 Like they want to be a rock star.
0:45:26 I knew I did because rock stars have their own character
0:45:30 and you’re adored.
0:45:32 And I think it taps into that thing when you’re little
0:45:34 and you do the first play and you hear that applause
0:45:38 and like you get addicted to it.
0:45:40 In order to have a career,
0:45:42 you have to sort of get past that at some point.
0:45:45 Being in a band and making music
0:45:48 and creating something live every night
0:45:50 is so incredible.
0:45:53 It’s like a mainline into your veins of just like artistry.
0:45:57 It can be also really nerve wracking.
0:45:59 Just like, oh, what if I mess up
0:46:00 or what if I sing the wrong line?
0:46:02 The first month, most of the rehearsal day
0:46:05 was just making the music
0:46:06 and learning how to play the music.
0:46:08 I think the direct results
0:46:10 and I think you see it in the play
0:46:12 is like we know each other as an acting company
0:46:15 so much better than probably any acting company
0:46:18 because we have to rely on each other
0:46:21 and we have to trust each other
0:46:22 that like the songs are gonna sound good.
0:46:25 It’s a build.
0:46:26 ♪ I feel it once again ♪
0:46:30 ♪ I feel it once again ♪
0:46:34 – Here is Sarah Pigeon again, who plays Diana.
0:46:37 – Off Broadway, the fights were not as equal.
0:46:40 We’re coming up on like nine,
0:46:43 maybe 10 months of knowing each other.
0:46:45 We know each other better
0:46:46 so there’s this sort of push and pull
0:46:48 that feels more reflective of an actual relationship.
0:46:52 There is a certain amount of intimacy and trust
0:46:55 and knowing of each other
0:46:58 that was different from when we started in August.
0:47:00 We were sort of playing at this idea
0:47:01 of like having been in a relationship
0:47:03 with someone for nine years.
0:47:05 Like, well, I haven’t known Thomas Inka for nine years.
0:47:08 – Familiarity goes two ways.
0:47:10 Familiarity is like lovely,
0:47:12 but you can hurt someone more.
0:47:14 – Right, you know how to hurt them.
0:47:17 – You know how to push their buttons.
0:47:18 You know how to like unravel the thread
0:47:20 like Diana says in the play.
0:47:22 I mean, they would never say it,
0:47:24 but like I know Sarah and Juliana were pissed with me
0:47:27 certain times when like I got the harmonies wrong
0:47:30 or like when I was so nervous playing masquerade
0:47:33 that I would like drop out of the song.
0:47:34 Juliana would have to pick up the slack.
0:47:37 We never talked about it,
0:47:38 but like, you know, I get it, I get it.
0:47:42 And same way for me, like when they were getting on me
0:47:44 about the harmonies, I was pissed off,
0:47:46 but like it’s all love, you know?
0:47:49 It’s like, it is.
0:47:50 I mean, it’s so cliche, but it’s like, it is family.
0:47:53 It’s family.
0:47:54 – So at the non-profit off-Broadway theater
0:47:58 Playwrights Horizons, the band was coming together.
0:48:02 During previews of the play, Word of Mouth started to build.
0:48:06 Would stereophonic become one of the rare shows
0:48:09 that make it through the non-profit farm system
0:48:12 and onto Broadway?
0:48:13 Here is David Ajmi again.
0:48:15 – We talked to a bunch of commercial producers,
0:48:17 but it never fully congealed.
0:48:19 Either I was having misgivings or they had misgivings
0:48:22 or they wanted to make changes or whatever.
0:48:24 And then there was another commercial producer
0:48:26 that was at one point attached at Playwrights Horizons,
0:48:29 but then in the middle of the audition process,
0:48:32 that fell apart.
0:48:33 – And then the show opened at Playwrights Horizons
0:48:36 and the reviews were very enthusiastic.
0:48:41 – And then they all started coming.
0:48:42 Like one commercial producer would talk to another
0:48:44 and then they slowly started.
0:48:46 I had no idea how this all worked
0:48:47 ’cause I had never done anything commercially before.
0:48:49 I thought it would be like,
0:48:51 the different commercial producers come
0:48:53 and then you interviewed them.
0:48:55 You know, like, why should I let you commercially produces?
0:48:59 But instead it was more like they formed a cartel
0:49:01 and then some got kicked out and some congealed.
0:49:04 And then we met the leader of the cartel.
0:49:06 – The cartel actually had a few leaders.
0:49:11 After the break, we hear from two of them.
0:49:13 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:49:14 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:49:16 We’ll be right back.
0:49:17 (upbeat music)
0:49:26 – John Johnson is one of the lead producers on Stereophonic
0:49:31 and he has produced many other shows on and off Broadway
0:49:34 over more than a decade.
0:49:35 Along with his business partner, Sue Wagner,
0:49:38 he is half of Wagner Johnson Productions.
0:49:41 They act as both producer and general manager.
0:49:45 This hybrid business model is common in London
0:49:48 and used to be common on Broadway
0:49:49 but is much less so today.
0:49:52 Let’s start with this.
0:49:53 What does a producer do?
0:49:55 – So the pure producer side is from, you know,
0:49:58 conception of the show,
0:50:00 either commissioning a writer to write a play or musical
0:50:03 or getting the rights to a play or musical to revive
0:50:07 all the way to assembling the creative team around that,
0:50:10 to the raising of the money,
0:50:13 to the marketing of the show, to securing a building.
0:50:16 That is the job of the producer.
0:50:19 If each Broadway show and each off Broadway show
0:50:21 is essentially an individual small business,
0:50:24 they are the CEO of said small business.
0:50:27 – Okay, and what does the general manager do?
0:50:30 – The GM is the person that does the contracts,
0:50:33 does the budgeting, does the day-to-day operations,
0:50:37 hires the staff surrounding the show.
0:50:40 And the producer is involved in that and advises on that,
0:50:44 again, using the small business kind of analogy,
0:50:46 both the CFO and a COO sort of combination.
0:50:49 – So how did John Johnson become co-CEO, CFO
0:50:54 and COO of Stereophonic?
0:50:57 – Remember, when the show premiered off Broadway
0:51:00 at Playwrights Horizons,
0:51:01 it had no commercial producers attached.
0:51:04 – Sue went the first week of previews
0:51:06 and absolutely lost her mind,
0:51:08 called me and said, you have to go see this play.
0:51:11 – Did you lose your mind too?
0:51:12 – I went after it opened.
0:51:14 So I go after my partner sets the bar a certain level high,
0:51:18 then the reviews come out and the reviews are transcendent
0:51:21 and it sets another level high and I went
0:51:23 and it cleared both those bars.
0:51:25 – What month and year are we talking about now?
0:51:27 – We’re talking November, 2023.
0:51:30 – Okay, so the COVID shutdown was over by now
0:51:33 and business was returning to Broadway,
0:51:35 but the overall numbers were still way down
0:51:38 and costs had risen a ton during COVID.
0:51:42 And from what I understand,
0:51:43 all the theaters were already full, yeah?
0:51:47 – At the time, there were no buildings available on Broadway.
0:51:49 There was another show that was not announced for the Golden,
0:51:52 but everyone kind of knew like,
0:51:53 “Oh, that’s what’s going into the Golden in the spring.”
0:51:56 – The John Golden Theater is one of the smallest on Broadway
0:52:02 with roughly 770 seats.
0:52:04 It is owned by the Schubert organization,
0:52:07 the biggest landlord on Broadway.
0:52:09 Their CEO is named Bob Wankle.
0:52:11 There is a famous old saying about Broadway economics.
0:52:15 You can’t make a living, but you can make a killing.
0:52:19 What’s that mean?
0:52:21 Most people in the theater work very hard
0:52:23 for relatively low pay.
0:52:25 If, however, you are involved in creating a hit,
0:52:29 something that plays for years and lives on
0:52:32 in touring companies, maybe a film, you will make millions,
0:52:36 but that’s rare.
0:52:38 The best way to make a killing is to be a landlord.
0:52:43 The Broadway business is, to a large degree,
0:52:45 a real estate business with a handful of owners
0:52:48 controlling the vast majority of theater space.
0:52:51 – We had gotten the show on the radar
0:52:53 of the Schubert organization.
0:52:54 We had heard there was the potential
0:52:56 of the Golden being available.
0:52:58 And at the time, Bob Wankle had given it to Sonya Friedman,
0:53:01 who’s a legendary producer in London,
0:53:03 as well as in New York.
0:53:05 I was in London and I went to Sonya and I said,
0:53:07 “Are you going to do this other play at the Golden?”
0:53:10 And she said, “I can’t fit it in the Golden.
0:53:11 I need it to go somewhere else.”
0:53:12 And I said, “Well, we want to do it for Stereophonic.”
0:53:15 And she said, “Well, I need to do it with you.”
0:53:16 And at the time, she was opening Stranger Things
0:53:18 on the West End.
0:53:19 She had not been in New York in weeks.
0:53:20 And I said, “Well, you haven’t seen the play yet.”
0:53:21 She said, “I don’t care.
0:53:22 Everyone I know who’s seen has loved it.
0:53:24 I need to be a part of it.”
0:53:25 – That is a first for me.
0:53:28 I have never been involved with a show before
0:53:30 that I pitched myself heavily to produce
0:53:32 that I hadn’t actually seen.
0:53:34 I’d read it, but I was in London when it opened
0:53:36 and I couldn’t get there.
0:53:37 – And by early December, we stood on stage
0:53:40 and told the cast that we were moving it to Broadway.
0:53:42 – What was that like?
0:53:43 – It was incredible.
0:53:44 I mean, for six out of seven of them
0:53:46 to find out they were going to make their Broadway debut
0:53:47 was amazing.
0:53:49 This is a playbook that we’ve run before.
0:53:51 Here’s the hot play of the fall
0:53:53 and we’re gonna take that momentum from the fall,
0:53:55 find a building for it in the spring
0:53:57 and run the awards playbook
0:54:00 as well as the prestige playbook
0:54:02 to have it catch on with a newer and larger audience.
0:54:05 – Tell me a little bit about your investors on this show
0:54:08 and the capitalization of the show on Broadway,
0:54:10 how it compares to other things you’ve done.
0:54:12 – It was demand unlike anything that we’ve seen
0:54:15 post-pandemic in terms of folks wanting to get in.
0:54:17 – Meaning it had to turn people away?
0:54:19 – Yeah, we absolutely to turn people away.
0:54:20 – What was the minimum investment you accepted?
0:54:23 – 25,000.
0:54:24 – I mean, traditionally that’s really small.
0:54:26 Producers didn’t used to do that kind of thing very much,
0:54:28 did they?
0:54:29 – Yeah, and there were some people who wrote
0:54:30 $150,000 checks or more
0:54:32 and then there were others who would bundle $25,000 units
0:54:36 to come up with a larger.
0:54:37 But again, our capitalization
0:54:38 because we were taking the production from playwrights
0:54:41 was capitalized at 4.8 million.
0:54:43 We spent less than that.
0:54:45 You wanna build in a certain amount of reserve
0:54:47 because we didn’t know how I was gonna sell at the beginning.
0:54:49 We were lucky enough to break even
0:54:50 in those first couple of weeks,
0:54:51 but having a little bit of a cover if it had not
0:54:53 was something we wanted to build in.
0:54:55 – Here’s a line from the New York Times review
0:54:57 when it opened on Broadway.
0:54:59 The play is a staggering achievement
0:55:01 and already feels like a must see American classic.
0:55:04 Where were you when you read this?
0:55:06 Who were you with and how did it make you feel?
0:55:08 – I was with Greg Noble and Sonia Friedman
0:55:10 in the press room at our opening night party.
0:55:12 The review came out, we opened it,
0:55:14 we read that first paragraph and we all looked at each other
0:55:16 and said, “Wow.”
0:55:18 – So let me just ask you now several weeks
0:55:20 into this run that is very successful
0:55:23 and looks to be even more successful,
0:55:25 especially if you win a boatload of Tonys.
0:55:28 Do you wish in a perfect world
0:55:30 you would put it into a bigger theater than the Golden?
0:55:32 – No.
0:55:33 – Because why not?
0:55:34 – Because it’s the perfect fit.
0:55:37 It has this way of wrapping its arms around a play
0:55:39 and making it intimate.
0:55:41 As with all shows, plays and musicals,
0:55:44 finding the right fit of building
0:55:45 and sometimes you don’t get a choice,
0:55:46 but this is where the timing worked out in this way
0:55:49 because it could have easily been,
0:55:50 “Oh, well, we don’t have the Golden or the Booth available,
0:55:52 “but we have this 1,100 seat theater available
0:55:54 “with a second balcony.”
0:55:56 And I don’t know necessarily
0:55:57 if it would have had the same reaction.
0:56:00 – On Broadway, as elsewhere,
0:56:04 awards drive ticket sales
0:56:07 and Stereophonic is nominated for 13 Tony Awards.
0:56:11 It can’t possibly win that many
0:56:13 since some categories contain multiple Stereophonic nominees.
0:56:17 Tom Pesinka, for instance,
0:56:19 is nominated for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
0:56:23 along with two other male actors in Stereophonic.
0:56:27 Will Brill, who plays Reg, the band’s bassist,
0:56:30 and Eli Gelb, who plays the recording engineer Grover.
0:56:33 I asked Pesinka what it’s like
0:56:35 to compete in the same category against his castmates.
0:56:40 – It’s awesome.
0:56:42 I’m like a super competitive person
0:56:44 and super ambitious person.
0:56:46 That’s why I think I can play Peter
0:56:48 ’cause I definitely have had many years of therapy
0:56:51 that have brought me to this place,
0:56:53 but deep down in my heart, I just wanna win.
0:56:56 The morning of the nominations,
0:57:00 I got a text from Will Brill that said, “Man you.”
0:57:05 And that’s how I found out.
0:57:08 – Man you, like the football club?
0:57:10 – No, like it’s you, man.
0:57:12 – Oh, I see, okay.
0:57:13 – Yeah, and then I called him and then I called Eli
0:57:15 because like so many shows are like it’s an ensemble piece
0:57:18 but like our show really is.
0:57:20 If someone is not at their best every night,
0:57:23 the show can so easily fall apart.
0:57:25 Everyone is so dedicated.
0:57:27 It’s funny that like I auditioned for those two roles
0:57:31 and I know for a fact why I didn’t get those roles
0:57:34 because those guys are perfect
0:57:36 and I’m perfect for mine.
0:57:39 – Would I like to win a Tony for sure?
0:57:42 And I keep joking that I’m gonna like
0:57:43 break their legs or whatever.
0:57:45 But ultimately like, God, this is my Broadway debut
0:57:48 in this play with this part and I got a Tony nomination.
0:57:51 All right, whatever.
0:57:52 – You’re saying like whatever,
0:57:53 like you don’t even need to win it, you’re saying?
0:57:55 – No, no, no, I want to win it.
0:57:57 I’m telling you, I wanna win it.
0:57:58 But if I don’t win it, it’s like, again, it’s cake.
0:58:02 – Okay, so Tom, you are 36 years old.
0:58:05 You’ve been at this for a while.
0:58:06 This is your first time on Broadway
0:58:08 and you find yourself in the kind of hit
0:58:11 that happens quite rarely.
0:58:13 Are you worried about, you know, what comes after?
0:58:18 – I’m not worried, I’m more excited.
0:58:20 And I don’t even think I know how much
0:58:22 it’s opened the door to certain things.
0:58:25 The morning of the Tony nominations,
0:58:28 I was sitting with my girlfriend and I was like,
0:58:31 okay, like a certain era of struggle for me is over.
0:58:36 And that feels liberating.
0:58:38 It was like a good 10 years of eating crap.
0:58:42 I’m not worried about the next job
0:58:44 in the same way that I was.
0:58:46 – How struggling was the struggle?
0:58:48 – It feels worse than it was.
0:58:50 I’d been working pretty consistently.
0:58:53 I’m very ambitious and like I wanna do the big stuff.
0:58:57 My therapist said after I called her on Tony morning,
0:59:00 she was like, did you think this would happen?
0:59:02 I said, no.
0:59:03 And then she was like, yeah, you did.
0:59:04 Like, you were confused for so many years
0:59:07 as to like, you knew that you were great
0:59:09 and you knew that inside of you,
0:59:10 you had something to offer,
0:59:12 but like people weren’t recognizing it.
0:59:14 And so that frustration, I think,
0:59:17 was more of the struggle than like getting a job.
0:59:20 – Sarah Pigeon is also nominated for a Tony Award
0:59:26 in the same category as her castmate, Juliana Canfield.
0:59:30 I asked Pigeon what it’s like to compete
0:59:33 against her onstage bandmate and real life friend.
0:59:37 – I’m just really excited to see everybody dressed up.
0:59:39 It’s like theater prom.
0:59:41 I sort of feel like we’ve all just won already.
0:59:45 I remember taking the stage combat class
0:59:47 and like, it doesn’t matter how good you are
0:59:49 at doing a fake punch.
0:59:50 If your partner doesn’t sell it,
0:59:52 it’s like we’ve created this sort of spire web
0:59:55 to hold each other up and support this piece
0:59:58 that we all believe in so much.
1:00:00 And theater people are amazing
1:00:02 because they spend like hours every single day
1:00:06 in dark theaters playing make-believe.
1:00:10 Figuring out how to make most sense and be so magical
1:00:13 and be thrilling and exciting and true.
1:00:16 – Are you a little surprised
1:00:17 at this relatively late stage in our civilization
1:00:20 with so many modes of performing and entertaining,
1:00:22 most of which are, you know,
1:00:24 electronic or digital in some way now.
1:00:26 Are you surprised that this old fashioned,
1:00:29 hand-made theatrical thing still exists
1:00:33 as intensely as it does?
1:00:36 – I think that, you know, people like something real.
1:00:40 It’s like a home-cooked meal.
1:00:41 Sure, you can go and get, you know,
1:00:43 penne pasta with vodka sauce in the freezer section,
1:00:46 the Ralph’s, but like,
1:00:48 if somebody makes you homemade penne pasta,
1:00:51 it’s gonna taste better and you’re gonna wanna eat it.
1:00:53 And then also with theater,
1:00:54 and in particular with this show,
1:00:57 it all happens in front of you
1:00:58 if this were to be a movie one day.
1:01:00 I would be curious to see how do they make,
1:01:02 I think what’s so thrilling about this
1:01:03 is that you see it all happen in real time
1:01:06 and the music’s all live and you see the mess-ups
1:01:09 watching someone do like a high-wire act of theater.
1:01:12 They walk on stage and there’s nothing but the set
1:01:16 and their body and their scene partner.
1:01:18 And you can’t call cut and you can’t do it over
1:01:21 is what’s so thrilling.
1:01:22 It’s like one of the oldest art forms in the world,
1:01:24 just storytelling.
1:01:25 And I think there’s a reason that it’s lasted so long.
1:01:28 I don’t think people go to see a robot theater performance
1:01:31 maybe once, but I feel like it’ll close
1:01:35 like six weeks after opening.
1:01:36 – And I went back to David Ajmi, the playwright.
1:01:43 Without him, none of this other stuff exists.
1:01:48 I asked Ajmi if he wins the Tony for best play,
1:01:52 what kind of speech she would give.
1:01:54 – Or they just told me about this the other day.
1:01:56 My publicist said I had to do it.
1:01:58 – You hadn’t thought about it
1:01:58 until your publicist told you?
1:02:00 – No, because I’ve never done anything like this before.
1:02:03 I don’t usually get these kind of prizes
1:02:04 where you sit in the audience
1:02:05 and then they call your name or they don’t call it.
1:02:07 – Let’s assume that you’re drafting
1:02:09 the beginning of an idea right now
1:02:11 for your Tony acceptance speech, should you win.
1:02:13 And maybe that’s terrible luck to even think about it,
1:02:15 but if you’re willing to engage, what do you wanna say?
1:02:18 – Well, Sue said, our producer said something like,
1:02:21 I mean, we were talking about this the other day
1:02:22 and I was like, Sue, let’s not have this conversation.
1:02:24 But she said, you should not thank a lot of people.
1:02:27 You should more say some personal thing.
1:02:30 I can extemporize without going too crazy.
1:02:33 So maybe I would extemporize on stage
1:02:34 and just say what was inside of me.
1:02:36 That’s what I like seeing.
1:02:37 I wanna see someone talk about something
1:02:40 that’s real to them in the moment.
1:02:42 I mean, in the theater, everyone struggles so hard
1:02:45 to get to where they are.
1:02:46 It’s such a hard job.
1:02:47 It’s a really weird job.
1:02:49 – And there’s just something so moving
1:02:50 about theater artists getting together
1:02:52 and celebrating each other,
1:02:53 not in the spirit of competition,
1:02:55 but just like, look at us.
1:02:56 Like we’re all doing this
1:02:57 and somehow we’re surviving.
1:02:58 How are we doing it?
1:03:00 So that’s sort of maybe the spirit of which,
1:03:02 if I’m lucky enough to be up there,
1:03:03 I would say something like that.
1:03:04 – That was pretty good to see.
1:03:07 I told you I could do it.
1:03:08 ♪ I’m gonna see you when I get there ♪
1:03:11 ♪ I’ll see you when I get there ♪
1:03:14 – The Tony Awards are on Sunday, June 16th.
1:03:17 How many will Stereophonic win?
1:03:19 We’ll let you know next week on part two.
1:03:23 Also, what will the success of Stereophonic mean
1:03:26 for the future of an industry that’s been dying forever?
1:03:30 – I think the reason why,
1:03:31 especially a lot of young people
1:03:32 are coming to the theater in 2024 is that we forget
1:03:37 because I think we have collective PTSD,
1:03:39 but we were locked in our houses for three and a half years.
1:03:42 And I think people want to be around each other.
1:03:46 That’s next time on the show.
1:03:47 Until then, take care of yourself.
1:03:49 And if you can, someone else too.
1:03:52 (upbeat music)
1:03:54 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
1:03:58 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app
1:04:01 also at freakonomics.com,
1:04:04 where we publish transcripts and show notes.
1:04:06 This episode was produced by Alina Coleman.
1:04:09 Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman,
1:04:11 Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne,
1:04:14 Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen,
1:04:16 Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Kanfer,
1:04:19 Lyric Bowditch, Morgan Levy,
1:04:21 Neil Coruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas,
1:04:23 Sarah Lilly, Teo Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.
1:04:26 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by The Hitchhikers.
1:04:29 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
1:04:32 Additional music in this episode by Will Butler,
1:04:34 Justin Craig, and the cast of Stereophonic.
1:04:38 As always, thanks for listening.
1:04:43 – Oh, thanks, you gave me some tissues.
1:04:45 (blows raspberry)
1:04:46 – Mm, glad we got that on tape, though.
1:04:47 (laughs)
1:04:49 – I hope you can cut that out.
1:04:51 (upbeat music)
1:04:53 – The Freakonomics Radio Network,
1:04:57 the hidden side of everything.
1:04:59 (upbeat music)
1:05:02 Stitcher.
1:05:03 (upbeat music)
1:05:06 you

0:00:00 Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner.
0:00:06 The other day I sat back and I took a look at the work we’ve been putting out on Freakonomics
0:00:11 Radio over the past few months.
0:00:13 I’m really proud of it.
0:00:14 I think a lot of the episodes are very strong, but a lot of the topics are tough.
0:00:19 The continuing opioid epidemic, the political and economic issues around immigration, both
0:00:26 legal and illegal, the boom in fraud among academic researchers, and how the private
0:00:32 equity industry is making our economy ever more top heavy.
0:00:37 Like I said, good episodes, but yeah, serious stuff.
0:00:41 Also, there are wars going on all over the place.
0:00:45 Our former and maybe future president just became the first presidential felon.
0:00:50 I could go on and on, and I’m sure you could too.
0:00:53 So today we are bringing you something a bit different, a bit lighter to head into summer.
0:00:59 Something to think about, maybe talk about on your cross country road trip, or while
0:01:04 you’re working in the garden, or maybe flying to another continent to visit family or go
0:01:09 to a wedding or just catch your breath.
0:01:12 As you know, we spend a lot of time on the show simply looking for interesting new things
0:01:17 in the world and trying to explain them.
0:01:20 These guests is very good at finding such things.
0:01:23 For instance.
0:01:24 There is this thing called Takubin.
0:01:28 If you’re travelling around Japan, rather than hauling your bags from hotel to hotel,
0:01:33 there’s a whole system, every hotel apparently has it, you send it on and they ship your
0:01:37 bags around for you.
0:01:39 I’d never heard of that before.
0:01:41 And then you sort of think, well, why don’t we have that?
0:01:43 Yeah, why don’t we?
0:01:44 That I don’t know.
0:01:46 I only know the facts, nothing else.
0:01:49 Today on Freakonomics Radio, facts that will make you think twice, that may make you grimace
0:01:55 or laugh, that will hopefully help you catch your breath and look at this wondrous, weird
0:02:01 world of ours in a slightly new way.
0:02:16 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:02:18 It’s a podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:02:27 All right.
0:02:33 First things first, a proper introduction is in order.
0:02:36 I’m Tom Whitwell.
0:02:38 I am a consultant and you’ve stuck with my difficult question, first of all.
0:02:46 Okay.
0:02:47 Let me help out a bit.
0:02:48 Whitwell works at a London consulting firm called Magnetic.
0:02:51 They specialize in innovation and design.
0:02:54 Not your usual consultants is how they put it.
0:02:57 Among the clients that Whitwell has worked with are National Grid, the big UK power company,
0:03:03 Vogue Business, a spin-off from The Fashion Magazine, and the candy and chocolate company
0:03:08 Mars, which, as we will learn in today’s episode, also makes something that is very
0:03:13 much not candy or chocolate.
0:03:16 Before he got into consulting, Whitwell was a journalist with magazines and with The Times
0:03:21 of London.
0:03:22 He also designs electronic musical instruments, some of which have been bought by Tom York,
0:03:27 the Radiohead.
0:03:29 But none of that is why we’re speaking with Tom Whitwell today.
0:03:34 We’re speaking with Tom Whitwell today because of another thing he does.
0:03:39 Every year I write a list called 52 Things I Learned.
0:03:42 Whitwell has been publishing his list of 52 Things He’s Learned every year for the past
0:03:47 10.
0:03:48 He publishes it himself on the blogging platform Medium, but then it ricochets all around
0:03:54 the interweb, or at least certain precincts of it, where it is greeted with enthusiasm
0:03:59 and wonder.
0:04:01 It is a weird list in the best way.
0:04:04 Nearly all the items are, at the very least, informative and interesting.
0:04:08 Some are sad, but some are joyful.
0:04:11 The joy is generated by, as Richard Feynman might have said, the pleasure of finding
0:04:16 things out, and for Whitwell himself, the pleasure of sharing these things.
0:04:22 The items are short, pithy, word perfect.
0:04:26 Here’s one from last year’s list.
0:04:28 Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies in the US in 2022.
0:04:33 Eight of them were by romance novelist Colleen Hoover.
0:04:37 Here’s one from the 2015 list.
0:04:40 In China, cigarette companies are allowed to sponsor schools with slogans like genius
0:04:45 comes from hard work, tobacco helps you become talented.
0:04:50 And this one from 2021.
0:04:52 10% of US electricity is generated from old Russian nuclear warheads.
0:04:59 As a consultant, Whitwell engages with a wide variety of topics.
0:05:04 I asked if most of his 52 things are a byproduct of his day job.
0:05:09 They’re certainly bits where part of the job means I will be immersed in one particular
0:05:14 subject for a few months, and then another subject for a few months afterwards.
0:05:18 I think if I went back and looked over the years, I would say, “Oh, that’s why I was
0:05:23 doing an electricity project,” or “That’s why I was doing a fashion project.”
0:05:27 How much do you enjoy your day job?
0:05:30 I enjoyed a lot.
0:05:31 The variety is the key thing.
0:05:33 Typically, a project might last three weeks to about six months.
0:05:38 So every few months, you’re fundamentally changing in a completely different environment.
0:05:43 A couple of months ago, we were asked to help Mars, who produce chocolate and pet food,
0:05:49 they have a chain of stores around.
0:05:52 I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but somehow chocolate and pet food in the same sentence.
0:05:56 Exactly.
0:05:57 Conjure’s images, I’d rather not conjure, but please continue.
0:06:01 And we do a lot of work for them.
0:06:02 They might come and say …
0:06:04 Would some of your work be for them to not describe themselves as a chocolate and pet
0:06:09 food company?
0:06:10 No, I think that will be marketing, and we don’t really do that.
0:06:14 So one piece of work I did for them, they have a research station in the UK, which has
0:06:21 a large number of cats and dogs living in comfortable and pseudo-domestic situations.
0:06:27 And they came to us and said, “We want to be sure
0:06:30 we’re using the best technology to track them, to monitor them, to understand what they’re
0:06:35 doing, and we want somebody to just spend a little bit of time looking around the market
0:06:41 and suggesting different ways you might do this.”
0:06:44 And so I spent two weeks or something researching that area.
0:06:49 How do people track animals?
0:06:50 How do they understand what they’re doing?
0:06:52 How do they monitor them?
0:06:54 So a project like that gives you an opportunity to find pet-related facts that might appear
0:06:59 on the list of 52 things you learned that year?
0:07:02 Yeah.
0:07:03 One year has a piece about weightlifting dogs, and that came from some research we were doing
0:07:09 for Mars, who I hastened about us certainly not considering weightlifting dogs as a thing
0:07:14 to try and sell.
0:07:15 Oh, you mean a person lifting a dog?
0:07:17 I was imagining a dog on a bench press.
0:07:20 No, dogs lifting weights.
0:07:22 Dogs wearing, for example, weighted little waistcoats, dogs having protein shakes, dog
0:07:30 influencers who are big, muscly dogs, who advertise dog protein shakes.
0:07:35 And I think there’s some kind of yard equipment that are good for dogs to lift things up,
0:07:39 so essentially dogs bench pressing things.
0:07:42 I see.
0:07:43 And is that something that the dogs choose to do?
0:07:46 I didn’t get too deeply into that.
0:07:47 I discovered this thing existed.
0:07:50 I was asked in that to say, let’s look at the outside edge.
0:07:53 What are the strangest things that pet parents are doing?
0:07:57 Something like that will leak over into 52 things because if I’m spending a few weeks
0:08:01 researching something like that, I will normally find quite a lot of interesting things and
0:08:06 store them away to put in the list.
0:08:09 Witwell has a history of curating odd and interesting things.
0:08:14 Back in the 2000s, I wrote a blog when people had blogs called Music Thing that was all
0:08:19 about here are interesting, funny, weird pieces of music equipment.
0:08:25 Can you give a couple of examples?
0:08:26 It’s kind of endless.
0:08:27 There is an enormous installation on the coastline which are pipes that are played by the waves
0:08:35 coming in and going out.
0:08:36 There’s a big music conference called NAMM, which is the big trade show.
0:08:41 And every year you will find extraordinary things that people invent to do music, whether
0:08:47 it’s quadruple necked guitars or folding drum kits or whatever it is, it’s one of those
0:08:53 areas where loan entrepreneurs and inventors can come up with things and they can find
0:08:59 a big audience and they can get things out there.
0:09:01 Okay, so take us through the origins of your 52 things I learned list.
0:09:06 In 2014, I had left The Times, I had fallen out with the editor and it became clear I
0:09:12 needed to find a different job.
0:09:14 While I was unemployed and looking around for things to do, I had this idea of collecting
0:09:21 things that I’d found during the year.
0:09:23 I was always a fan of the list of colours, the genre, and my ambition for it was that
0:09:29 I was obviously looking for a job, so I was looking for ways to reach out for people in
0:09:35 London who I could reach out to and I thought, well, if I can get a thousand people to look
0:09:40 at this, then that would feel like out of that a few of those people are going to be
0:09:45 people who might be able to offer me a job.
0:09:49 So it was kind of a creativity resume or ingenuity resume, maybe you’re showing people what your
0:09:56 brain’s interested in, hoping they’d be interested in your brain too?
0:09:59 Yeah, it was exactly that or it was content marketing for me, I suppose.
0:10:04 Can you describe the, you know, either the characteristics of something you discovered
0:10:07 that you know will be a good link or maybe the emotion you feel or the cognitive jolt
0:10:15 you get when you come upon something that you know will be good?
0:10:19 The simplest thing is it’s probably something that is counterintuitive.
0:10:22 It’s not what you expect.
0:10:24 It’s something that maybe seems to have some slightly bigger resonance, but it doesn’t
0:10:29 have to.
0:10:30 How much do you care about a sort of news peg if you sent yourself something in February
0:10:34 that was on a topic like transportation safety and then that year there happened to be a
0:10:39 bunch of bridges collapse?
0:10:41 I assume you tend to gravitate toward the Peggy things?
0:10:46 Not really, no.
0:10:47 I probably do ignore that completely, the news peg.
0:10:50 There was something that always slightly frustrated me working in newsrooms and there will often
0:10:54 be stories that are, you know, two years old, five years old, ten years old.
0:10:58 They don’t need to all have been published that year at all.
0:11:01 I don’t really pay any attention to that.
0:11:04 Let’s go to 2022, 52 things you learned in 2022.
0:11:09 This is item number 30.
0:11:11 By the way, is there any relevance to the order?
0:11:14 Just shuffling really.
0:11:15 Try to make sure the first 10 are really good and then they’re reasonably random so you
0:11:20 don’t get three similar ones.
0:11:21 So number 30 from the year 2022 was in the 1920s, new car sales were falling.
0:11:30 So the industry promoted the term jaywalking to blame accidents on pedestrians rather than
0:11:36 aggressive drivers.
0:11:38 That is such an appealing catnip-y item on so many levels.
0:11:42 So talk me through it and what I really want to know is how confident we are that that
0:11:47 is in its totality true.
0:11:50 With something like that, the question is, is this clickbait or is this a real thing?
0:11:55 And I would be very confident that was true because, well, I was going to say I’ve read,
0:12:00 I haven’t read.
0:12:01 I’ve flipped through the book, Fighting Traffic by Peter D. Norton, which is all about the
0:12:08 early years of the car industry.
0:12:11 And the critical point seems to have been in around 1922, 23, 24 when it wasn’t a decline
0:12:20 in sales.
0:12:21 It was a decline in growth.
0:12:22 And at the same time, there was this feeling that cars were pretty dangerous.
0:12:28 People were getting killed by them.
0:12:30 There was a petition in Cincinnati to limit the speed of cars to 25 miles an hour, which
0:12:35 I thought was interesting because at the moment the speed limit across most of London is 20
0:12:40 miles an hour.
0:12:41 So car companies saw that this was a problem.
0:12:45 And this notion of jaywalking, which should evolve, I think, organically as a word, really,
0:12:50 the idea that people were country bumpkins and they were walking around and they didn’t
0:12:56 know that there was big cars zooming past.
0:13:00 And a jay was a word used by whom to mean what?
0:13:03 I think it meant country folk, kind of rustics.
0:13:06 American?
0:13:07 It was an American.
0:13:08 An American, yeah.
0:13:09 This is all American, I think.
0:13:10 Before then, roads were for people.
0:13:12 If you look at pictures of roads before cars, you had big, wide roads and they were full
0:13:18 of people and horse drawn vehicles.
0:13:21 Bicycles.
0:13:22 I suppose they look in some ways like when you see pictures of Chinese roads in the 80s
0:13:27 when you see enormous torrents of bicycles going across, but you wouldn’t see cars.
0:13:30 And this idea that the curb was a barrier that must not be stepped across.
0:13:36 I think the really nice explanation of this was when the idea of jaywalking came along,
0:13:41 the pedestrian felt they were wrong.
0:13:43 They felt they were wrong to be in the road.
0:13:45 The road no longer belonged to them, it belonged to cars.
0:13:48 Exactly.
0:13:49 Car firms would hire boy scouts to give cars the pedestrians saying, we’re a new era.
0:13:55 This is old fashioned, what you’re doing.
0:13:57 Don’t be a jay.
0:13:58 Don’t be a jay.
0:13:59 Don’t cross the road like that.
0:14:00 And how strong is the evidence that it was actually the auto industry that built and
0:14:05 encouraged this movement to the point where laws were written, forbidding it?
0:14:10 I am only basing my evidence on Mr. Norton’s book.
0:14:14 But he tells a very clear story that the relationship between the American Automobile Association
0:14:20 and the National Safety Council got closer.
0:14:24 And there was a guy called Charles Price who had worked for the National Safety Council.
0:14:30 And he was the person who came to the industry and said, you need to own safety.
0:14:36 For example, go into schools and say, we’re going to teach people road safety.
0:14:41 Road safety meant get out of the road, it’s not for you.
0:14:44 So how did jaywalking laws come about?
0:14:47 And was any segment of the auto industry directly affiliated with that?
0:14:52 I don’t know exactly that.
0:14:54 I think they came in.
0:14:56 It’s funny coming from the UK.
0:14:58 This whole concept of jaywalking is alien to us.
0:15:01 We have no law like that.
0:15:03 But pedestrians do seem to be quite obedient in the UK because there are crossing lights
0:15:09 and all things like that.
0:15:10 Yeah, we just don’t have laws about it.
0:15:12 No policeman will ever go and tell somebody off or give them a ticket for crossing the
0:15:18 road.
0:15:19 To be fair, I think that almost never happens in America.
0:15:21 The only time that’s ever happened to me in my life, and I jaywalk always everywhere,
0:15:25 was in Vancouver.
0:15:27 And I wasn’t even crossing mid block.
0:15:29 I was crossing at the intersection against the light.
0:15:32 There was no traffic.
0:15:33 And someone, you know, stopped me.
0:15:36 And I laughed.
0:15:37 And from reading about it, it does seem like people like you or me are generally not stopped
0:15:42 for jaywalking.
0:15:43 I have read that there was a department of justice report on the Ferguson, Missouri police
0:15:48 department, the place where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer, which became
0:15:52 a flash point in racial policing, said that 95% of the people there cited for jaywalking
0:15:59 are black.
0:16:00 Now, I don’t know what share of the population there is black, but still that sounds like
0:16:03 an aggressively high number.
0:16:04 I’m curious what kind of feedback you received or additional information maybe about jaywalking
0:16:11 when you published that piece.
0:16:12 I don’t remember.
0:16:13 I mean, you’ve got to remember that piece was, what, 14 words.
0:16:16 So I don’t think I saw anything particularly with that.
0:16:18 I mean, there’s a sort of thread of those kinds of stories.
0:16:21 The kind of story where an industry or a company or maybe a government is behind something that
0:16:28 you may think emerged naturally.
0:16:31 Is that what you mean by that kind of story?
0:16:33 Exactly that.
0:16:34 One of my favorite ones, which was a fact-checking challenge, but I do think was probably true.
0:16:39 The way I wrote it up was that Fondue was invented by the cheese industry, which does
0:16:44 seem to be more or less true in that Fondue did exist as a kind of niche Swiss dish.
0:16:51 But the Swiss cheese industry extensively promoted the idea that this was something that
0:16:57 families in America might be doing and that you could buy a Fondue set.
0:17:02 Another item in this category then of inventions that come from perhaps interested sources
0:17:10 rather than disinterested sources would be your item about the invention of the carbon
0:17:14 footprint.
0:17:15 Yeah.
0:17:16 This was really interesting.
0:17:17 So this was in, I think 2001, BP British Petroleum.
0:17:23 It was called BP Amaco previously.
0:17:25 It used to be British Petroleum.
0:17:27 They even changed their name, didn’t they?
0:17:28 They called it Beyond Petroleum.
0:17:30 I’m not certain if that was actually their official company name or if that was their
0:17:36 slogan, but there was a great piece by one of the ad executives who worked on it who
0:17:42 said how oil company advertising always used to be aimed essentially at investors and
0:17:48 the industry.
0:17:49 And it generally consisted of helicopter shots of oil tankers with somebody with a kind
0:17:56 of Morgan Freeman voice saying, we’re working hard to help the world work hard or something
0:18:03 like that.
0:18:05 That was the way all the companies were advertised.
0:18:07 And then come 2000 and you’ve got the real beginnings of concern about, I mean, not the
0:18:13 beginnings of concern about global warming, but more and more of that.
0:18:16 And I think at this stage, the only oil company that acknowledged that global warming was
0:18:21 a real thing was BP and their advertising switched completely instead of these kind
0:18:28 of helicopter shots and we’re making the world go round.
0:18:32 They went out onto the street and they interviewed people talking about climate change and talking
0:18:40 specifically about their part in climate change and what they should do.
0:18:45 And they created a calculator so you could go on and tap in stuff about your lifestyle
0:18:51 and how many holidays you went on, this kind of thing.
0:18:54 And you’re saying this carbon footprint calculator was created for BP by its ad agency, the very
0:19:02 famous Ogilvian Mather.
0:19:03 Is that right?
0:19:04 Yeah.
0:19:05 You got some kind of sum for how much weight of carbon you were responsible for.
0:19:10 It just seems like such an interesting and telltale shift, the idea from we are the company
0:19:16 that is making the world go round to as soon as that becomes problematic or questioned,
0:19:23 it’s now we’re interested in you and your responsibility and what you as a consumer
0:19:27 are doing.
0:19:28 It does strike me as interesting, if not paradoxical, that you, a consultant who helps firms do
0:19:37 a variety of things, but especially change behavior, either their own behavior or the
0:19:41 behavior that their customers and so on, are highlighting in many of your items, the fact
0:19:48 that advertisers, marketers and firms are trying to change behavior in order to suit
0:19:55 their own needs without those needs being obvious.
0:19:59 I suppose so.
0:20:00 I’m not somebody who works in marketing, I may be slightly more skeptical about marketing
0:20:06 than some people.
0:20:07 When you say you may be slightly more skeptical, why is that?
0:20:11 Something like the jaywalking story or the carbon footprint story, I think is amazing
0:20:16 in how it genuinely changes the way we as individuals perceive the whole playing field.
0:20:24 It’s not like you’re thinking product X is better than product Y, there’s that famous
0:20:28 story about when they’re trying to get women to smoke cigarettes and the idea of torches
0:20:34 of freedom, which is to encourage women to, that feels quite direct, but the entire notion
0:20:40 of how we interact with the street being changed by a marketing campaign feels amazing to me.
0:20:48 How many people each day are thinking slightly differently as they walk along the pavement
0:20:52 because of that campaign 100 years ago?
0:20:58 After the break, more echoes of the past and perhaps more harbingers of the future.
0:21:04 I’m Stephen Dubner, this is Freakonomics Radio, and we will be back with Tom Whitwell
0:21:09 right after this.
0:21:22 Tom Whitwell is a collector of interesting facts.
0:21:26 He spends his year reading widely, websites and blogs, newspapers and magazines, books
0:21:31 and journals, and then he presents his harvest each December in a list of 52 items.
0:21:38 Most items are short, just a sentence or two, often they have nothing to do with the previous
0:21:44 year.
0:21:45 For instance, this one about Ibn Battuta, the medieval explorer.
0:21:49 When Ibn Battuta visited China in 1345, facial recognition was already in use.
0:21:56 All visiting foreigners had their portraits discreetly painted and posted on the walls
0:22:01 of the bazaar.
0:22:02 Here’s another.
0:22:04 When users download the Kenyan Mobile Loans app Ocache, the software’s terms and conditions
0:22:09 quietly give it permission to access their contacts.
0:22:13 If they fall behind in repayments, the app starts to message all those contacts to shame
0:22:19 the user into repaying the debt.
0:22:22 Whitwell’s skill at distilling a long thing into a short thing comes from his time as
0:22:28 a magazine editor.
0:22:29 It was almost a bit like, you know, pull quotes in magazines where you’ve got a magazine article
0:22:33 and you find the little quote that is the important bit from the article.
0:22:37 That important bit is then reprinted in a bigger font inside the body of the article.
0:22:43 This acts as a sort of billboard or a secondary headline for the article.
0:22:48 And that’s the thing that often gets read far more than anything else because people
0:22:51 don’t read the body copy but they scan over and they read the pull quotes.
0:22:55 Even what I was doing was reading an article online and then finding the pull quote and
0:23:00 keeping that in a list, keeping a store of that.
0:23:04 Given the state of AI in 2024, if I give chat GPT or perplexity a 2000 word article and
0:23:12 I give Tom Whitwell the same article, do you think you’ll do better at finding what might
0:23:15 be judged to be the best pull quote or worse?
0:23:18 So I have tried this quite a lot.
0:23:20 I’ve done experiments with this over the years.
0:23:24 I think I would probably have a pretty good chance of finding a more interesting, more
0:23:29 distinctive take.
0:23:30 I’ve done things like obviously asking chat GPT to come up with things for the list and
0:23:37 it can cut with fictional ones that are kind of fine.
0:23:42 But obviously the fact they’re fictional does make them a lot less interesting than if they
0:23:45 were real.
0:23:46 I think AI at the moment does seem to struggle to find that quirkiness and distinctiveness.
0:23:54 Let’s go to 2017, item number 18, the NHS National Health Service, that’s the British
0:24:01 national health system, uses more than 10% of all pagers in the world.
0:24:07 Tell me about that, how much we trust that claim, etc.
0:24:10 So this is a really, really interesting one.
0:24:12 So 2017, I saw an article in the Economist that had this stat in it.
0:24:19 And because it was the Economist, I trusted it, I put it on the list.
0:24:23 After 2017, it became a sort of political issue in the UK.
0:24:29 The fact that we were using pagers somehow showed that the NHS was not in a good state.
0:24:35 It was not being well managed.
0:24:37 In 2019, the government put out a press release that said pagers are going to be banned by
0:24:44 2021.
0:24:45 They did say they’re going to be banned except for emergencies, which obviously in a hospital
0:24:49 context is quite a large loophole, I think.
0:24:53 And obviously between 2019 and 2021, quite a lot happened in the healthcare sphere.
0:25:00 So I don’t think a tremendous amount has really happened with this.
0:25:02 I think there are still a lot of pagers in use in the NHS.
0:25:07 Now, the pro pager people argue that it does fill a gap, right?
0:25:11 That it can be more reliable under certain circumstances, less prone to dead spots and
0:25:15 so on.
0:25:16 What do you know about that?
0:25:17 I think like anything, it’s a combination of there’s issues around the technology and
0:25:22 then there’s issues around culture and etiquette and how it works.
0:25:26 I think these are also quite poorly understood.
0:25:28 So I was talking to my dad.
0:25:29 My dad used to be a hospital doctor.
0:25:31 He started working in hospitals in 1968 and he said they had pagers then, these battery
0:25:39 powered handheld devices that would go off and then you had to run and ring a number
0:25:46 and they worked on a private radio network within the hospital.
0:25:49 In the UK, they called bleeps, which I always think is quite sweet.
0:25:53 I just found this really interesting.
0:25:54 I actually spoke to a doctor called Constantino Regas, who’s an NHS doctor in Southampton
0:26:01 and he previously sent freedom of information requests to every NHS trust in the country
0:26:08 to say, how many pagers are you using?
0:26:10 How much are you spending on it?
0:26:11 What are you doing with it?
0:26:14 He’s definitely anti pager.
0:26:16 Because why?
0:26:17 He said it’s a weird legacy aberration.
0:26:21 He would talk about you’re on an eight hour shift, you finally get a chance to go to the
0:26:26 bathroom and then you get bleeps and you have to run and it turns out it’s a nurse who wanted
0:26:31 you to prescribe some paracetamol to somebody who’s going to be discharged tomorrow.
0:26:35 So that he found very frustrating.
0:26:37 He said different wards were different.
0:26:40 Some were good.
0:26:41 Some, he had the phrase, bleeped incessantly, which I imagine must be very irritating.
0:26:47 But he also talked about having a crash bleep.
0:26:49 So this is where you are a doctor around the hospital or a nurse around the hospital.
0:26:53 You have this thing on you and it bleeps and you have to run to save somebody’s life, literally.
0:27:01 I read an interview with a final year medical student who said, the first time I carried
0:27:06 a crash bleep, I was more self aware.
0:27:08 I felt older and more responsible than I’d ever felt in a clinical setting.
0:27:12 So there’s a kind of status thing, but there’s also etiquette.
0:27:16 You need a method to gather people.
0:27:18 You need a method to communicate within the hospital.
0:27:21 And some people will do that well and some people will do that badly.
0:27:24 And that frustration has been mapped onto a particular device, which I think is unfair.
0:27:31 I am in some ways pro-pager.
0:27:34 The basic story was the NHS uses 10% of remaining pages.
0:27:38 I would imagine the other 90% are in American hospitals.
0:27:41 So whether or not that 10% is accurate, and I’ve seen it challenged on a couple of dimensions,
0:27:46 but whether or not that’s accurate, the fact is that if you look around the world a little
0:27:50 bit, you do see that older technologies often have long and productive afterlives.
0:27:55 Can you talk about any other technologies that you see that are used maybe not so prominently,
0:28:01 but seriously, that one might think had disappeared?
0:28:05 Facts machines are still used in Japan quite a lot.
0:28:08 My assumption is that is something to do with handwriting and having a very complicated
0:28:13 script.
0:28:14 That may be wrong.
0:28:16 What about computer programming that is in languages that almost nobody learns anymore?
0:28:21 That absolutely is an issue.
0:28:22 COBOL is one of those languages.
0:28:25 And you often see stories where a particular organization, it might be an old pension fund,
0:28:31 has that requirement that they need to hire people to bring those things to life.
0:28:35 The other big one is floppy disks.
0:28:37 I think until very recently, there were systems on Boeing 747s that relied on floppy disks.
0:28:43 These legacy systems do exist and often work well.
0:28:46 They are often just fine.
0:28:49 With the pages, the idea that you can spend an awful lot of money tearing out one system
0:28:54 and putting in another system is an idea that people who sell systems often promote.
0:29:01 In that press release, when the pages were banned, part of their evidence was they said
0:29:06 there are 130,000 pages in the NHS and it’s costing 6.6 million pounds a year.
0:29:12 You hear that and you go, well, that sounds bad until you realize that’s 50 pounds per
0:29:16 page or per year.
0:29:17 It’s less than a pound a week.
0:29:19 For a critical healthcare piece of infrastructure, it’s probably the best bargain ever.
0:29:25 Here’s an item from your 2023 list that I was particularly interested in.
0:29:29 Item number five says job satisfaction in the US is at a 35-year high, not low, which
0:29:36 is what I think everybody would be expecting.
0:29:38 You’re right that in 2010, less than 45% of people said they were satisfied with their
0:29:42 jobs but in 2022, over 62% said they were.
0:29:46 You’re right further that you need to go back to the 80s to find satisfaction as high as
0:29:51 today.
0:29:52 Talk to me about that.
0:29:53 First of all, were you as surprised as I was to read that number?
0:29:56 I was really surprised by that.
0:29:58 It was at a time when we had high inflation, a real sense of uncertainty in the economy
0:30:05 and uncertainty in people’s careers.
0:30:08 It did absolutely seem just really counterintuitive.
0:30:11 How can this be right?
0:30:13 There obviously are other surveys.
0:30:15 This was the survey by the conference board.
0:30:18 Which is funded by whom or represents whom?
0:30:21 It’s an American organization.
0:30:22 I don’t know an enormous amount about it, but it does seem to be a very large and well-trusted
0:30:29 industry body.
0:30:30 Most of the things people were satisfied were the people they work with commuting.
0:30:36 More than 65% of people were satisfied with commuting, which I found interesting.
0:30:40 Job security, physical environment.
0:30:43 What I found really interesting was the change.
0:30:47 Over the last maybe 10 years, one of the big changes has been in performance reviews, which
0:30:53 I was just interested because it’s such a unglamorous part of working life.
0:31:00 No politician has ever stood up and said, “I’ve got a grand vision for performance reviews
0:31:04 and this is how I’m going to change the world.”
0:31:06 But this survey suggests that there is a real fundamental shift in the last just 10 years
0:31:12 that you’ve got millions of people who were made unhappy by that process, who now are
0:31:21 happier and more satisfied.
0:31:22 I think we’ve all met people and possibly had experience yourself of those old school
0:31:27 performance reviews where once a year you’d go and sit with your boss and they would
0:31:32 say something that annoyed you or made you think, “They really don’t understand who
0:31:36 I am at all.
0:31:37 They don’t understand what I do in this company.”
0:31:39 And you were furious for the next six months and that idea that training in HR is actually
0:31:47 fixing things like that, I found counterintuitive and really interesting.
0:31:52 I do see that the conference board is a non-profit and non-partisan research group made up of
0:31:59 over a thousand public and private corporations and other organizations encompassing 60 countries.
0:32:05 Maybe it’s not so surprising that a firm representing big corporations says, “Hey, guess what?
0:32:11 People at corporations are actually much happier than you think.”
0:32:15 But let’s assume that there’s some truth in these numbers.
0:32:19 I’m curious to know what it may say about the rise and or triumph of the HR department
0:32:26 in firms.
0:32:27 Do you think it’s kosher to make that kind of connection?
0:32:31 That’s how I understood it.
0:32:32 I do think that that is an area which, as I said, is very unglamorous and really celebrated,
0:32:39 but it’s a place where there are people who are very committed to what they’re doing and
0:32:43 they’re experimenting and they’re changing.
0:32:45 Like instead of having one big annual review, we should have continuous assessment, these
0:32:51 sorts of things, those ideas spread in five, 10 years and they seem to work a lot better.
0:32:59 So this is about job satisfaction in the US.
0:33:02 What can you tell us about in your country, the UK?
0:33:04 I don’t know because I haven’t read a survey as extensive as this.
0:33:08 I think the real challenge is that counterintuitive split between a kind of national narrative,
0:33:16 which certainly in the UK is of quite a lot of doom and gloom at the moment for a whole
0:33:21 range of reasons.
0:33:22 Considerably more than the US at the moment, as much as ours may feel gloomy.
0:33:26 Yeah, I think there’s a classic newsroom thing, which is something that is bad and critical,
0:33:33 is reportable and is interesting and is seen as important.
0:33:37 Something that is, this has improved by 5% since last year.
0:33:41 It’s almost impossible to report, and that’s not because there’s a grand conspiracy stopping
0:33:45 it.
0:33:46 It’s just very hard to make that sort of story work, but after a few years of 5% improvements,
0:33:51 you really start to get a change in the way people work and people feel and in happiness.
0:33:59 Here’s to finding happiness wherever it can be found.
0:34:03 After the break, if someone tells you they are 100 years old, should you believe them?
0:34:09 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:34:10 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:34:12 We’ll be right back.
0:34:22 Given that we are in the sixth month of the year in our 12-month Gregorian calendar, Tom
0:34:28 Whitwell is roughly halfway through collecting items for his 52 Things I Learned list for
0:34:34 this year.
0:34:36 Can you give us any kind of preview of 2024, or do you not do that, or would it be impossible
0:34:41 even if you wanted to do that?
0:34:43 Well, let me just look in my 52 Things folder and see what I’ve posted in recently.
0:34:49 One that I saw just last week was there is a wonderful graph of, well, it’s not a wonderful
0:34:56 graph.
0:34:57 It’s a fascinating graph of global deaths from disasters.
0:35:01 What’s really striking with this is how much it varies.
0:35:06 There’s a really interesting thread about how we are getting much better at coping with
0:35:09 those kind of disasters.
0:35:11 So there’s a period from 2016 to 2021 when it was extremely low.
0:35:17 Okay.
0:35:18 I’m looking at this graph now too, and I see that in 2023 there was a spike.
0:35:24 Where we go from, it looks like an average of around 35,000 deaths per year from natural
0:35:30 disaster, then 2023 was like a tripling of that.
0:35:33 So the point here is that life in this category is extremely random, yes?
0:35:38 It is, but the thing I find interesting is that idea that there are ways that we are
0:35:42 getting better at some of these.
0:35:43 So there’s a whole thing about typhoons in places like Bangladesh and India, where they
0:35:48 spend a lot of money building big, concrete shelters that he used to schools during the
0:35:53 normal periods, but then everyone piles in and the deaths in some of those things have
0:35:57 gone from being tens, hundreds of thousands of people dying to much, much smaller.
0:36:03 I really appreciate that you seem to be a person who generally looks for the best in
0:36:10 people or the world, but in one case, in your list from 2023, item number 15, you are basically
0:36:21 calling a bunch of sweet, cuddly old people a bunch of liars.
0:36:26 You write the number of super centenarians in an area tends to fall dramatically about
0:36:32 100 years after accurate birth records are introduced.
0:36:36 Walk me through this one, please.
0:36:38 I’m especially interested to learn how much lying or maybe misremembering or uncertainty
0:36:42 there may be for people who think they’re over 100 years old when in fact they’re not.
0:36:48 So this is an amazing story.
0:36:50 One of the things I always look at with these lists is something where it’s a little tiny
0:36:55 nudge, you know, it’s a few lines.
0:36:58 But if you go and get into it, you will discover this extraordinary rabbit hole.
0:37:03 And that’s what I’ve done with this business of super centenarians.
0:37:08 A lot of this relates to in the mid 2000s, this idea came about around blue zones.
0:37:16 If you were somebody who read Sunday supplements of newspapers or if you watched National Geographic,
0:37:22 they spent a lot of time talking about blue zones, which were areas where people lived
0:37:26 remarkably long, like 110 years old.
0:37:31 They talk about eating beans, drinking red wine, not too much food, little amounts of
0:37:37 meat, natural exercise, not going to the gym but, you know, gardening, having friends,
0:37:43 having a sense of purpose.
0:37:44 A couple of academics, Italian and French academics, I think, identified an area in
0:37:50 Sardinia that they felt had unusual longevity.
0:37:55 Oliastra, it’s called?
0:37:57 Yes.
0:37:58 One of the things I thought, seeing this very casually, I thought the blue zones referred
0:38:03 to like blue skies and blue sea.
0:38:06 It’s just the software they used to draw the graph for the blue circle around that area.
0:38:12 Anyway, they wrote this paper.
0:38:14 They had a few suggestions in the original paper about what might be causing this longevity,
0:38:20 which was slightly odd.
0:38:21 They were to do with inbreeding and genetics, and a lot of it was about male and female longevity
0:38:27 being different.
0:38:28 A lot of that got lost because the paper caught the attention of a guy called Dan Butner.
0:38:34 He started his career running celebrity croquet tournaments.
0:38:39 He then did these three enormous transcontinental bike rides where he rode across the Americas
0:38:45 and the Soviet Union.
0:38:46 I’ve got in with National Geographic, discovered this report, and in 2008, published his book
0:38:54 called Secrets of the Blue Zones or something like that with these kind of instructions
0:38:59 around eating beans and drinking red wine.
0:39:02 This has been an incredibly successful notion.
0:39:05 I was on Oprah just last year, he had a Netflix series about this, but if we all sat around
0:39:11 eating tomatoes and garlic, sitting in the sun, drinking wine with our friends, we would
0:39:15 live to be 110.
0:39:17 And you, Tom Whitwell, are here to tell us this is kind of all bullshit?
0:39:20 Well, it’s not me.
0:39:22 It’s an academic at Oxford called Saul Newman.
0:39:26 He’s a demographer.
0:39:27 He’s been publishing a pre-print of a paper.
0:39:30 He published it first, I think, in 2019, and he’s updating and updating it.
0:39:34 So it gets kind of longer and longer.
0:39:36 And I can’t say I’ve ever read any other papers about developmental biology, but if
0:39:42 they’re all like this, I want to read more of them because this is an extraordinary document.
0:39:46 He just tears the entire thing to pieces from beginning to end.
0:39:52 So a centenarian, if somebody lives past 100, a super centenarian, if somebody lives past
0:40:00 110, Saul’s point is really that this is all not true.
0:40:07 He says, “In Europe, where birth records are generally pretty well recorded.”
0:40:11 So in the U.S., they’ve always been very poorly recorded.
0:40:14 I don’t think birth certificates were used nationally until 1946 in the U.S.
0:40:19 But in Europe, they were pretty well recorded.
0:40:21 And these were usually state records or church records or family records?
0:40:25 I think in small areas, they were sort of community records, I guess.
0:40:29 He says, “Remarkable longevity is predicted.”
0:40:33 If you want to find areas of remarkable longevity, and this is like 110 and above, you look for
0:40:40 areas with poverty, low per capita incomes, short life expectancy, high crime rates, worse
0:40:48 health, higher deprivation, as he says, “Relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected
0:40:56 predictors of centenarian and super centenarian status.”
0:41:00 So his hypothesis is that these figures are not true.
0:41:07 And are they not true primarily because of actual fraud, lying people saying something
0:41:14 that they know to not be true, or the lack of good records, or just general uncertainty?
0:41:20 I think it’s a combination, but probably fraud is a big part of it.
0:41:25 The way I imagine this is you’re living in a small rural town in remote Greece or Italy.
0:41:33 Somebody comes to you with an idea.
0:41:34 They say, “I’ve got a mate who works in the council, and if we pay him a bit of money,
0:41:40 he can change your age so that you as a 50-year-old, and now 60, so you get your pension.”
0:41:46 So it’s not just you turn, whatever, 91 and you start telling people, “Yeah, I just hit
0:41:51 100 just for pride,” you’re saying this was financially driven fraud sometimes.
0:41:55 This is the suggestion.
0:41:56 I got much darker, much faster than I expected, Tom.
0:42:00 I thought it was just lovely old people exaggerating a little bit, but you’re saying they’re shakedown
0:42:04 artists.
0:42:05 And there’s lots of other things.
0:42:06 I think there’s probably stuff around insurance where you’d get much cheaper insurance if
0:42:10 your age was different.
0:42:11 And then there’s also these complicated family situations where you might not want the crazy
0:42:17 cousin to inherit the farm.
0:42:19 So it’s very useful if the mother becomes the grandmother or vice versa, or children
0:42:26 where the parenting of the child is slightly complicated.
0:42:29 So there are a lot of possible things, and this isn’t unknown.
0:42:33 So 2012, after the financial crisis in Greece, 20,000 people who were getting pension payments
0:42:40 or welfare had that stopped.
0:42:43 They were obviously investigating government spending because they were dead mostly.
0:42:48 A quick side note, Witwell got the number wrong here on the number of Greeks who lost
0:42:54 their benefits.
0:42:55 It wasn’t 20,000, it was 200,000.
0:42:57 All right, moving on.
0:43:00 You might say, “Well, that’s Greece, but what about Japan?”
0:43:03 Which generally has much stronger records.
0:43:12 In 2010, 230,000 Japanese centenarians were discovered to be missing imaginary clerical
0:43:15 eras or dead.
0:43:17 This was an 82% error rate.
0:43:20 And what are the blue zones in Japan?
0:43:22 Okinawa is the blue zone in Japan.
0:43:24 World War II was not good for Okinawa.
0:43:28 Supposedly about 90% of their paper records were destroyed.
0:43:33 After the war, if you needed documents, you would go to the U.S.-led military government.
0:43:40 They didn’t really speak a great deal of Japanese, and they used a different calendar from the
0:43:45 one in Japan.
0:43:46 So the opportunities for confusion were significant there.
0:43:49 In those places where there are supposedly a lot of older people, much older people,
0:43:54 are there particular days of the month or months of the year where suspicious birthdays
0:43:58 tend to cluster, for instance?
0:44:00 There is a lot of that.
0:44:01 Things like people are born on the first of the month, which just suggests that it’s probably
0:44:08 been chucked in rather than thought about in too much detail.
0:44:12 But the paper is relentless.
0:44:14 It just goes on and on and on.
0:44:16 Things like in France, there are 19 people over the age of 110 in the overseas departments.
0:44:23 So that’s Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana.
0:44:26 Paris’s population is seven times larger, and it has 17 of these people.
0:44:31 Which suggests that fraud of this sort, if it’s fraud, is easier in certain precincts
0:44:36 than in others, where the record-keeping is very different?
0:44:38 Yeah, fraud or just chaos.
0:44:41 But there is more.
0:44:42 So there’s another big factor in this.
0:44:44 His argument is that it’s very unlikely that really anyone is 110.
0:44:51 It’s very, very, very unlikely that there are clusters of people who are 110 in very
0:44:56 poor areas with low life expectancy.
0:44:58 But he then goes back to look at the main argument of this Blue Zones movement, is that people
0:45:04 live a long time because they live what seem like healthy lives.
0:45:10 And he looks into these areas to find how well they align with those healthy lives.
0:45:15 Okinawa is the one he chooses.
0:45:17 So one of the claims is people in these areas, they don’t go to the gym, but they live in
0:45:24 environments that are nudging them to move without thinking about it.
0:45:28 They have gardens, that sort of thing.
0:45:30 Unfortunately, Okinawa, out of 47 prefectures in Japan, has the highest rate of obesity.
0:45:39 And it’s not the lowest for gardening, because not surprising you Tokyo and Osaka are lower,
0:45:47 but it’s the lowest after them.
0:45:48 So they’re not healthy and they’re not gardening.
0:45:52 Now, it’s possible that there was a cohort, however, that was, you know, an older cohort
0:45:58 that did garden or that is not obese, right?
0:46:02 We shouldn’t.
0:46:03 No, that is certainly possible.
0:46:04 I mean, if you look at cohorts, another of his is they have a concept called Ikegai, which
0:46:10 means kind of purpose in life and why I get up in the morning.
0:46:15 Unfortunately, Okinawa has the fourth highest rate of suicide in over 65s in the country.
0:46:20 It’s not a very happy place, generally, he goes through all of these things like their
0:46:25 meat consumption.
0:46:27 The idea is that people in these blue zones eat very small amounts of meat, maybe five
0:46:31 kilos of meat a year.
0:46:33 In Okinawa, the average is 40 kilos.
0:46:36 Okinawan residents each consume an average of 14 cans of spam per year.
0:46:43 Well, it could be that spam has some magical longevity properties that we don’t know about
0:46:48 yet.
0:46:49 That wasn’t what he was telling Oprah, I don’t think.
0:46:52 It’s not like the blue zones thing is evil.
0:46:55 The advice does seem quite sensible.
0:46:57 I’m sure we should all eat more vegetables, we should have a better social life.
0:47:01 I do worry about connection between the idea that very poor people living on very, very
0:47:08 meager resources can magically live a long time.
0:47:12 And the problem with that supposition is what?
0:47:14 Well, it’s that actually the opposite is true.
0:47:17 So rich people live longer.
0:47:20 Rich countries, the average life expectancy is 80 plus, poor countries, it’s 60 plus.
0:47:27 It’s not mysterious or subtle.
0:47:29 So what has been the response of Dan Butner and the pro-blue zone crowd?
0:47:34 I have not been able to find any yet.
0:47:36 There has certainly been back and forth with the early versions of the paper.
0:47:40 I think the stuff that the blue zone organization is doing.
0:47:43 It’s not like it’s a terrible thing, but it does feel from reading this like the basis
0:47:49 of the research is, it’s probably quite a lot more complicated than that.
0:47:55 The blue zones organization did in fact issue a response to Saul Newman’s critique, attacking
0:48:00 his analysis along a variety of dimensions.
0:48:04 For instance, even though some blue zones are high poverty areas, people there do,
0:48:09 they wrote, enjoy very good or excellent public health services.
0:48:14 Saul Newman then responded to their response.
0:48:18 Here’s a quote.
0:48:19 It was basically what you’d expect if you told the Yeti hunting society that Yetis
0:48:24 did not exist.
0:48:27 Is there a link or three from the past that you are just exceedingly proud of or happy
0:48:33 about?
0:48:34 I don’t know about proud or happy about.
0:48:36 When you ask that, there are some that seem to kind of take on a life.
0:48:40 Well, it’s more that they sort of make sense.
0:48:42 So I remember I think in probably the first one, there was a story that China has completed
0:48:49 a major dam project for every day since 1949, which to me just seemed like such an extraordinary
0:48:59 way of understanding the world and kind of ambition and scale.
0:49:04 Are there topics or types of ideas that you avoid?
0:49:08 There’s definitely a kind of positive thing.
0:49:11 I remember quite clearly in 2016, doing the list and thinking, actually, this feels quite
0:49:16 important to do a list that is full of progress and things that are good in the world.
0:49:24 Because why?
0:49:25 2016, why?
0:49:26 Because we had Brexit and Trump, essentially.
0:49:28 And so there was such a strong narrative amongst people who are often on the Internet of just
0:49:34 doom and gloom and everything is terrible in the world and you were constantly seeing
0:49:37 stories and suggestions and evidence of things being terrible and trying to find those stories
0:49:42 that were about progress or growth or improvement, those I felt were important.
0:49:51 Can you just describe the process a little bit?
0:49:53 I’m curious how formal it is, I’m curious how it unspools during the year and whether
0:49:59 you’re diligently reading and saving up links and maybe even coming up with way more than
0:50:05 52 that you have to weed down or is it the opposite?
0:50:08 You find that in November, December, there’s this rush to get enough.
0:50:13 How does it work?
0:50:14 So I do it during the year.
0:50:15 The way I do it now is when I find a link, I email it to myself with the words 52 things
0:50:22 in the title.
0:50:23 My Gmail has a filter and it drops them all into a folder and then come November, there’s
0:50:30 usually a hundred or so in there and I just start going through it.
0:50:37 And in the cold, light of day, some that excited you no longer excite you, I assume?
0:50:41 Yeah, absolutely.
0:50:42 And some I will have sent myself an article that kind of seems interesting but doesn’t,
0:50:46 you know, I hadn’t actually worked out what the fact is.
0:50:51 I am glad that Tom Witwell has taken it upon himself to work out what all the facts are.
0:50:57 And I’m always delighted to read his annual list of 52 things.
0:51:01 Maybe we’ll check in with him again at the end of this year to see what he’s come up
0:51:04 with.
0:51:05 Thanks to Tom for the good conversation today and thanks to you as always for listening.
0:51:11 If you have learned some good things so far this year, send them along.
0:51:15 I’d like to hear them.
0:51:17 Your email is radio@freakonomics.com.
0:51:21 Coming up next time on the show, if you are someone who used to go to the theater but
0:51:25 has kind of given up on it, you’re not alone.
0:51:29 But there is a new play on Broadway, a play that like Tom Witwell’s list is weird in
0:51:36 all the right ways.
0:51:37 It’s called Stereophonic.
0:51:39 It’s the one all the rock stars are going to see.
0:51:41 The Tony Awards are coming up and Stereophonic may bring home a bunch of them.
0:51:47 You will find out why the show works the way it does and what that might mean for the future
0:51:52 of Broadway.
0:51:54 That’s next time.
0:51:55 Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too.
0:52:01 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
0:52:03 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app or at Freakonomics.com where we also
0:52:09 publish transcripts and show notes.
0:52:11 This episode was produced by Alina Cullman with help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson.
0:52:16 Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Elsa Hernandez,
0:52:21 Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Canfer, Lyric Bowditch,
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